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31.  IG.  ICt^uaag 


DUKE 

UNIVERSITY 

LIBRARY 


FRIENDS    OF 

nUKE    UNIVERSITY 

LIBRARY 


Joha...L.i..eysay 


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littp://www.arcliive.org/details/newworldsforoldOOwell 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


SHORT  STORIES 

Thirty  Strange  Stories 
Tales  of  Space  and  Time 
Twelve  Stories  and  a  Dream 

ROMANCES 

The  Time  Machine 

The  Wonderful  Visit 

The  Island  of  Dr.  Moreau 

The  War  of  the  Worlds 

The  Invisible  Man 

The  First  Men  in  the  Moon 

The  Sea  Lady 

Whe}i  the  Sleeper  Wakes 

In  the  Days  of  the  Comet 

NOVELS 

The  Wheels  of  Chance 
Love  and  Mr.  Lewisham 
Kipps 

SOCIOLOGICAL  ESSAYS 
Anticipations 
Mankind  in  the  Making 
A  Modern  Utopia 
The  Future  in  America 


NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    ■    BOSTON    •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA  •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON    •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 


BY 


H.    G.    WELLS 

AUTHOR    OF    "ANTICIPATIONS,"     "A    MODERN    UTOPIA," 
AND    SUNDRY    ROMANCES    AND    NOVELS 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1908 

AU  rigkU  reterved 


COPYBIGHT,   1907, 

By  the  MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  February,  1908. 


NorfBooti  ?3te80 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 


OEUIPTKR 

I.    The  Good  Will  in  Man 


II.  The  Fundamental  Idea  of  Socialism 

III.  The  First  Main  Generalization  of  Socialism 

IV.  The  Second  Main  Generalization  of  Socialism 
V.  The  Spirit  of  Gain  and  the  Spirit  of  Service 

VI.  Would  Socialism  destroy  the  Home? 
VII.  Would   Modern   Socialism   abolish  All  Prop- 
erty?        

VIII.  The  Middle-Class  Man  and  Socialism 

IX.  Some  Objections  to  Socialism 

X.  Socialism  a  Developing  Doctrine 

XI.  Revolutionary  Socialism 

XII.  Administrative  Socialism 

XIII.  Constructive  Socialism  . 

XIV.  Some  Arguments  ad  Hominem 
XV.  The  Advancement  of  Socialism  . 


PAOK 
1 

21 

27 

56 

88 

114 

137 

162 
177 
205 
219 
243 
261 
291 
325 


\ii 


NEW  WORLDS   FOR   OLD 
CHAPTER  I 

THE   GOOD   WILL   IN   MAN 
§1 

The  present  writer  has  long  been  interested  in  the 
Socialist  movement  in  Great  Britain  and  America  and 
in  all  those  complicated  issues  one  lumps  together  as 
''social  questions."  In  the  last  few  years  he  has  gone 
into  it  personally  and  studied  the  Socialist  movement 
closely  and  intimately  at  first  hand;  he  has  made  the 
acquaintance  of  many  of  its  leaders  upon  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic,  joined  numerous  organizations,  attended 
and  held  meetings,  experimented  in  Socialist  politics. 
From  these  inquiries  he  has  emerged  with  certain  very 
definite  conclusions  as  to  the  trend  and  needs  of  social 
development  and  these  he  is  now  rendering  in  this  book. 
He  calls  himself  a  Socialist,  but  he  is  by  no  means  a 
fanatical  or  uncritical  adherent.  To  him  Socialism  pre- 
sents itself  as  a  very  noble  but  a  very  human  and  fallible 
system  of  ideas.  He  does  in  all  sincerity  regard  its 
spirit,  its  intimate  substance,  as  the  most  hopeful  thing 
in  human  affairs  at  the  present  time,  but  he  does  also 


2  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

find  it  shares  with  all  mundane  concerns  the  qualities  of 
inadequacy  and  error.  It  suffers  from  the  common  pen- 
alty of  noble  propositions ;  it  is  hampered  by  the  insuffi- 
ciency of  its  supporters  and  advocates  and  by  the 
superficial  tarnish  that  necessarily  falls  in  our  atmosphere 
of  greed  and  conflict  darkest  upon  the  brightest  things. 
In  spite  of  these  admissions  of  failure  and  unworthiness 
in  himself  and  those  about  him,  he  remains  a  Socialist. 
In  discussing  Socialism  with  very  various  sorts  of 
people  he  has  necessarily  had  time  after  time  to  encoun- 
ter and  frame  a  reply  to  a  very  simple  seeming  and  a 
really  very  difficult  question:  "What  is  Socialism?" 
It  is  almost  like  asking,  "What  is  Christianity?"  or 
demanding  to  be  shown  the  atmosphere.  It  is  not  to 
be  answered  fully  by  a  formula  or  an  epigram.  Again 
and  again  the  writer  has  been  asked  for  some  book 
which  would  set  out  in  untechnical  language,  frankly 
and  straightforwardly,  what  Socialism  is  and  what  it  is 
not,  and  always  he  has  hesitated  in  his  reply.  Many 
good  books  there  are  upon  this  subject,  clear  and  well 
written,  but  none  that  seem  to  tell  the  whole  story  as  he 
knows  it ;  no  book  that  gives  not  only  the  outline  but  the 
spirit,  answers  the  main  objections,  clears  up  the  chief 
ambiguities,  covers  all  the  ground;  no  book  that  one 
can  put  in  the  hands  of  inquiring  youth  and  say, 
"There!    that  will  tell  you  precisely  the  broad  facts 


GOOD  WILL  IN  MAN  3 

you  want  to  know."  Some  day,  no  doubt,  such  a  book 
will  come.  In  the  meanwhile  he  has  ventured  to  put 
forth  this  temporary  substitute,  his  own  account  of  the 
faith  that  is  in  him. 

Socialism,  then,  as  he  understands  it,  is  a  great  intel- 
lectual process,  a  development  of  desires  and  ideas  that 
takes  the  form  of  a  project,  a  project  for  the  reshaping  of 
human  society  upon  new  and  better  lines.  That  in  the 
ampler  proposition  Socialism  claims  to  be.  This  book 
seeks  to  expand  and  establish  that  proposition  and  to 
define  the  principles  upon  which  a  Socialist  believes 
this  reconstruction  of  society  should  go.  The  particu- 
lars and  justification  of  this  project  and  this  claim,  it 
will  be  the  business  of  this  book  to  discuss  just  as  plainly 
as  the  writer  can. 

§2 

Now,  because  the  Socialist  seeks  the  reshaping  of 
human  society,  it  does  not  follow  that  he  denies  it  to  be 
even  now  a  very  wonderful  and  admirable  spectacle. 
Nor  does  he  deny  that  for  many  people  life  is  even  now 
a  very  good  thing.  For  his  own  part,  though  the 
writer  is  neither  a  very  strong  nor  a  very  healthy  nor  a 
very  successful  person,  though  he  finds  much  unattain- 
able and  much  to  regret,  yet  life  presents  itself  to  him, 
more  and  more  with  every  year,  as  a  spectacle  of  inex- 
haustible interest,  of  unfolding  and  intensifying  beauty, 


4  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

and  as  a  splendid  field  for  high  attempts  and 
stimulating  desires.  Yet  none  the  less  is  it  a 
spectacle  shot  strangely  with  pain,  with  mysterious 
insufficiencies  and  cruelties,  with  pitfalls  into  anger  and 
regret,  with  aspects  unaccountably  sad.  Its  most  ex- 
alted moments  are  most  fraught  for  him  with  the  appeal 
for  endeavour,  with  the  urgency  of  unsatisfied  wants. 
These  shadows  and  pains  and  instabilities  do  not,  to 
his  sense  at  least,  darken  the  whole  prospect ;  it  may  be, 
indeed,  that  they  intensify  its  splendours  to  his  per- 
ceptions ;  yet  all  these  evil  and  ugly  aspects  of  life  come 
to  him  with  an  effect  of  challenge;  as  something  not  to 
be  ignored  but  passionately  disputed,  as  an  imperative 
call  for  whatever  effort  and  courage  lurks  in  his  compo- 
sition. Life  and  the  world  are  fine,  but  not  as  an 
abiding  place ;  as  an  arena  —  yes,  an  arena  gorgeously 
curtained  with  sea  and  sky,  mountains  and  broad  pros- 
pects, decorated  with  all  the  delicate  magnificence  of 
leaf  tracery  and  flower  petal  and  feather,  soft  fur  and 
the  shining  wonder  of  living  skin,  musical  with  thunder 
and  the  singing  of  birds;  but  an  arena,  nevertheless, 
an  arena  which  offers  no  seats  for  idle  spectators,  in 
which  one  must  will  and  do,  decide,  strike  and  strike 
back,  —  and  presently  pass  away. 

And  it  needs  but  a  cursory  view  of  history  to  realize  — 
though  all  knowledge  of  history  confirms  the  generaliza- 


GOOD  WILL  IN  MAN  5 

tion  —  that  this  arena  is  not  a  confused  and  aimless 
conflict  of  individuals.  Looked  at  too  closely,  it  may- 
seem  to  be  that,  a  formless  web  of  individual  hates  and 
loves ;  but  detach  one's  self  but  a  little,  and  the  broader 
forms  appear.  One  perceives  something  that  goes  on, 
that  is  constantly  working  to  make  order  out  of  casualty, 
beauty  out  of  confusion,  justice,  kindliness,  mercy,  out 
of  cruelty  and  inconsiderate  pressure.  For  our  present 
purpose  it  will  be  sufficient  to  speak  of  this  force  that 
struggles  and  tends  to  make  and  do,  as  Good  Will. 
More  and  more  evident  is  it,  as  one  reviews  the  ages, 
that  there  is  this  much  more  than  lust,  hunger,  avarice, 
vanity,  and  more  or  less  intelligent  fear,  among  the 
motives  of  mankind.  This  Good  Will  of  our  race, 
however  arising,  however  trivial,  however  subordinated 
to  individual  ends,  however  comically  inadequate  a 
thing  it  may  be  in  this  individual  case  or  that,  is  in  the 
aggregate  an  operating  will.  In  spite  of  all  the  con- 
fusions and  thwartings  of  life,  the  halts  and  resiliencies 
and  the  counter-strokes  of  fate,  it  is  manifest  that  in 
the  long  run,  human  life  becomes  broader  than  it  was, 
gentler  than  it  was,  finer  and  deeper.  On  the  whole  — 
and  nowadays  almost  steadily  —  things  get  better.  There 
is  a  secular  amelioration  of  life,  and  it  is  brought  about 
by  Good  Will  working  through  the  efforts  of  men. 
Now   this    proposition   lies   quite   open   to    dispute. 


6  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

There  are  people  who  will  dispute  it  and  make  a  very 
passable  case.  One  may  deny  the  amelioration,  or  one 
may  deny  that  it  is  the  result  of  any  Good  Will  or  of 
anything  but  quite  mechanical  forces.  The  former  is 
the  commoner  argument.  The  appeal  is  usually  to 
what  has  been  finest  in  the  past,  and  to  all  that  is  bad 
and  base  in  the  present.  At  once  the  unsoundest  and 
the  most  attractive  argument  is  to  be  found  in  the  de- 
liberate idealization  of  particular  ages,  —  the  thirteenth 
century  in  England,  for  example,  or  the  age  of  the 
Antonines.  The  former  is  presented  with  the  bright- 
ness of  a  missal,  the  latter  with  all  the  dignity  of  a 
Roman  inscription.  One  is  asked  to  compare  these 
ages,  so  delightfully  conceived,  with  a  patent  medicine 
vendor's  advertisement  or  a  Lancashire  factory  town, 
quite  ignoring  the  falsities  of  mediaeval  law  or  the  slums 
and  hunger  and  cruelty  of  Imperial  Rome. 

But  quite  apart  from  such  unsound  devices,  it  is,  we 
may  admit,  possible  to  make  a  very  excellent  case 
against  our  general  assertion  of  progress.  One  can  in- 
stance a  great  number  of  things,  big  and  little,  that  have 
been  better  in  past  times  than  they  are  now.  For  exam- 
ple, they  dressed  more  sumptuously  and  delightfully  in 
mediaeval  Venice  and  Florence  than  we  do  —  all,  that  is, 
who  could  afford  it;  they  made  quite  unapproachably 
beautiful  marble  figures  in  Athens  in  the  time  of  Peri- 


GOOD  WILL  IN  MAN  7 

cles;  there  is  no  comparison  between  the  brickwork  of 
Verona  in  the  twelfth  century  and  that  of  London  when 
Cannon  Street  station  was  erected;  the  art  of  cookery 
declined  after  the  splendid  period  of  Roman  history  for 
more  than  a  thousand  years ;  the  Gothic  architecture  of 
France  and  England  exceeds  in  nobility  and  quality  and 
aggregated  beauty  every  subsequent  type  of  structure. 
This  much  one  agrees  is  true  and  beyond  disputing.  The 
philosophical  thought  of  Athens  again,  to  come  to  greater 
things,  was  to  the  very  climax  of  its  extinction  bolder, 
more  free,  more  finely  expressed  than  that  of  any  epoch 
since.  And  the  English  of  Elizabeth's  time  was,  we  are 
told  by  competent  judges,  a  more  gracious  and  powerful 
instrument  of  speech  than  in  the  days  of  Queen  Anne  or 
of  Queen  Victoria. 

So  one  might  goon  in  regard  to  a  vast  number  of  things, 
petty  things  and  large  matters  alike ;  the  list  would  seem 
overwhelming  until  the  countervailing  considerations 
came  into  play.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  hardly 
an  age  or  a  race  that  does  not  show  us  something  better 
done  than  ever  it  was  before  or  since,  because  at  no  time 
during  the  last  thousand  years  has  human  effort  ceased 
and  absolutely  failed.  Isolated  eminence  is  no  proof 
of  general  elevation.  Always  in  this  field  or  that, 
whether  it  was  in  the  binding  of  books  or  the  enamelling 
of  metal,  the  refinement  of  language  or  the  assertion  of 


8  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

liberty,  particular  men  have  by  a  sort  of  necessity 
grasped  at  occasion,  —  "  found  themselves  "  as  the  saying 
goes,  —  and  done  the  best  that  was  in  them.  So  always 
while  man  endures,  whatever  else  betide,  one  may  feel 
assured  at  this  or  that  special  thing,  some  men  will  find 
a  way  to  do  and  get  to  the  crown  of  endeavour.  Such 
considerations  of  decline  in  particular  things  from  the 
standard  of  the  past  do  not  really  affect  the  general 
assertion  of  a  continuous  accumulating  betterment  in 
the  lot  of  men,  do  not  invalidate  the  hopes  of  those  who 
believe  in  the  power  of  men  to  end  forever  many  of  the 
evils  that  now  darken  the  world,  who  look  to  the  reser- 
voirs of  human  possibility,  as  as  yet  a  scarcely  touched 
supply,  who  make  of  all  the  splendour  and  superiorities  of 
the  past  no  more  than  a  bright  promise  and  suggestion 
for  the  unworn  future  our  every  act  builds  up,  into  which, 
whether  we  care  or  no,  all  our  achievements  pour. 

Many  evils  have  been  overcome,  much  order  and 
beauty  and  scope  for  living  has  been  evolved  since  man 
was  a  hairy  savage  holding  scarcely  more  than  a  brute's 
intercourse  with  his  fellows;  but  even  in  the  compara- 
tively short  perspective  of  history,  one  can  scarcely  deny 
a  steady  process  of  overcoming  evil.  One  may  sneer 
at  contemporary  things,  it  is  a  fashion  with  that  un- 
happily trained  type  of  mind  which  cannot  appreciate 
without  invidious  comparison,  so  poor  in  praise  that  it 


GOOD  WILL  IN   MAN  9 

cannot  admit  worth  without  venting  a  compensatory 
envy;  but  of  one  permanent  result  of  progress  surely 
every  one  is  assured.  In  the  matter  of  thoughtless  and 
instinctive  cruelty  —  and  that  is  a  very  fundamental 
matter  —  mankind  mends  steadily.  I  wonder  and 
doubt  if  in  the  whole  world,  at  any  time  before  this,  an 
aged,  ill-clad  woman  or  a  palpable  cripple  could  have 
moved  among  a  crowd  of  low-class  children  as  free  from 
combined  or  even  isolated  insult  as  such  a  one  would  be 
to-day  caught  in  the  rush  from  a  London  Board  School. 
Then,  for  all  our  sins,  I  am  sure  the  sense  of  justice  is 
quicker  and  more  nearly  universal  than  ever  before. 
Certain  grave  social  evils,  too,  that  once  seemed  innate  in 
humanity,  have  gone,  —  gone  so  effectually  that  we  can- 
not now  imagine  ourselves  subjected  to  them;  the  cruel- 
ties and  insecurities  of  private  war,  the  duel,  overt 
slavery,  for  example,  have  altogether  ceased ;  and  in  all 
Western  Europe  and  America  chronic  local  famines  and 
pestilences  come  no  more.  No  doubt  it  is  still  an  un- 
satisfactory world  that  mars  the  roadside  with  tawdry 
advertisements  of  drugs  and  food;  but  less  than  two 
centuries  ago,  remember,  the  place  of  these  boards  was 
taken  by  gibbets  and  crow-pecked,  tattered  corpses 
swinging  in  the  wind,  and  the  heads  of  dead  gentlemen 
(drawn  and  quartered,  and  their  bowels  burnt  before 
their  eyes)  rotted  in  the  rain  on  Temple  Bar. 


10  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

The  world  is  now  a  better  place  for  a  common  man 
than  ever  it  was  before,  the  spectacle  wider  and  richer 
and  deeper  and  more  charged  with  hope  and  promise. 
Think  of  the  universal  things  it  is  so  easy  to  ignore ;  of 
the  great  and  growing  multitude,  for  example,  of  those 
who  may  travel  freely  about  the  world,  who  may  read 
freely,  think  freely,  speak  freely !  Think  of  the  quite 
unprecedented  numbers  of  well-ordered  homes  and  cared- 
for,  wholesome,  questioning  children !  And  it  is  not 
simply  that  we  have  this  increasing  sea  of  mediocre 
well-being  in  which  the  realities  of  the  future  are  en- 
gendering, but  in  the  matter  of  sheer  achievement  I 
believe  in  my  own  time.  It  has  been  the  cry  of  the 
irresponsive  man  since  criticism  began,  that  his  own 
generation  produced  nothing;  it's  a  cry  that  I  hate  and 
deny.  When  the  dross  has  been  cleared  away  and  com- 
parison becomes  possible,  I  am  convinced  it  will  be 
admitted  that  in  the  aggregate,  in  philosophy,  and 
significant  literature,  in  architecture,  painting,  and 
scientific  research,  in  engineering  and  industrial  inven- 
tion, in  state-craft,  humanity  and  valiant  deeds,  the 
last  thirty  years  of  man's  endeavours  will  bear  com- 
parison with  any  other  period  of  thirty  years  whatever  in 
his  history. 

And  this  is  the  result  of  effort;  things  get  better  be- 
cause men  mean  them  to  get  better  and  try  to  bring 


GOOD  WILL  IN  MAN  11 

betterment  about;  this  progress  goes  on  because  man, 
in  spite  of  evil  temper,  blundering,  and  vanity,  in  spite 
of  indolence  and  base  desire,  does  also  respond  to  Good 
Will  and  display  Good  Will.  You  may  declare  that  all 
the  good  things  in  life  are  the  result  of  causes  over  which 
man  has  no  control,  that  in  pursuit  of  an  "enlightened 
self-interest"  he  makes  things  better  inadvertently. 
But  think  of  any  good  thing  you  know!  Was  it  thus 
it  came? 

§3 

And  yet,  let  us  not  disguise  it  from  ourselves,  for  all 
the  progress  one  can  claim,  life  remains  very  evil ;  about 
the  feet  of  all  these  glories  of  our  time  lurk  darknesses. 

Let  me  take  but  one  group  of  facts  that  cry  out  to 
all  of  us  —  and  will  not  cry  in  vain.  I  mean  the  lives 
of  little  children  that  are  going  on  now  —  as  the  reader 
sits  with  this  book  in  his  hand.  Think,  fcr  instance,  of 
the  little  children  who  have  been  pursued  and  tormented 
and  butchered  in  the  Congo  Free  State  during  the  last 
year  or  so :  hands  and  feet  chopped  off,  little  bodies  torn 
and  thrown  aside  that  rubber  might  be  cheap,  the  tires 
of  our  cars  run  smoothly,  and  that  detestable  product  of 
political  expediency,  the  king  of  the  Belgians,  have  his 
pleasures.  Think,  too,  of  the  fear  and  violence,  the  dirt 
and  stress,  of  the  lives  of  the  children  who  grow  up  amidst 


12  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

the  lawless  internal  strife  of  the  Russian  political  chaos. 
Think  of  the  emigrant  ships  even  now  rolling  upon  the 
high  seas,  their  dark,  evil-smelling  holds  crammed  with 
humanity  and  the  huddled  sick  children  in  them  — 
fleeing  from  certain  to  uncertain  wretchedness.  Think 
of  the  dreadful  tale  of  childish  misery  and  suffering  that 
goes  on  wherever  there  are  not  sane  factory  laws ;  how 
even  in  so  civilized  a  part  of  the  world  as  the  United 
States  of  America  (as  Spargo's  Bitter  Cry  of  the  Children 
tells  in  detail)  thousands  of  little  white  children  of  six 
and  seven,  ill-fed  and  often  cruelly  handled,  toil  without 
hope. 

And  in  all  agricultural  lands  too,  where  there  is  no 
sense  of  education,  think  of  the  children  dragging  weary 
feet  from  the  filthy  hovels  that  still  house  peasants  the 
whole  world  over,  to  work  in  the  mire  and  the  pitiless 
winds,  scaring  birds,  bending  down  to  plant  and  weed. 
Even  in  London  again,  think  just  a  little  of  the  real  sig- 
nificance of  some  facts  I  have  happened  upon  in  the 
Report  of  the  Education  Committee  of  the  London 
County  Council  for  the  year  1905. 

The  headmaster  of  one  casually  selected  school  makes 
a  special  return  upon  the  quality  of  the  clothing  of  his 
405  children.  He  tells  of  7.4  per  cent  of  his  boys  whose 
clothing  was  ''the  scantiest  possible  —  e.g.,  one  ragged 
coat  buttoned  up  and  practically  nothing  found  beneath 


GOOD  WILL   IN  MAN  13 

it ;  and  boots  either  absent  or  represented  by  a  mass  of 
rags  tied  upon  the  feet";  of  34.8  per  cent  whose  "cloth- 
ing was  insufficient  to  retain  animal  heat  and  needed  ur- 
gent remedy  " ;  of  45.9  per  cent  whose  clothing  was  "  poor 
but  passable,  an  old  and  perhaps  ragged  suit  with  some 
attempt  at  proper  underclothing  —  usually  of  flannel- 
ette" ;  thus  leaving  only  12.8  per  cent  who  could,  in  the 
broadest  sense,  be  termed  "well-clad." 

Taking  want  of  personal  cleanliness  as  the  next  in- 
dication of  neglect  at  home,  11  per  cent  of  the  boys  are 
reported  as  "very  dirty  and  verminous";  34.7  per  cent 
whose  " clothes  and  body  were  dirty  but  not  verminous" ; 
42.5  per  cent  were  "passably  clean,  for  boys,"  and  only 
"12  per  cent  clean  above  the  average." 

Eleven  per  cent  verminous ;  think  what  it  means ! 
Think  what  the  homes  must  be  like  from  which  these 
poor  little  wretches  come !  Better  perhaps  than  the 
country  cottage  where  the  cesspool  drains  into  the 
water-supply  and  the  henhouse  vermin  invades  the 
home,  but  surely  intolerable  beside  our  comforts  !  Give 
but  a  moment  again  to  the  significance  of  the  figures 
I  have  italicized  in  the  table  that  follows,  a  summarized 
return  for  the  year  1906  of  the  "Ringworm"  nurses  who 
visit  the  London  Elementary  schools  and  inspect  the 
children  for  various  forms  of  dirt  disease. 


14 


NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 


Departments 

Number  of 
Children 
Examined 

Clean 

Partially 
Cleansed 

Verminous 

Boys  .     .     . 
Girls    .    .     . 
Infants    .     . 
Mixed .     .     . 
Special     .     . 

34,345 

36,445 

42,140 

5,855 

977 

32,726 

22,476 

6,675 

4,886 

624 

847 

4,426 

2,661 

298 

133 

1,139 
12,003 

29,675 
897 
296 

Total    .     . 

119,762 

67,387 

8,365 

44,010 

Does  not  this  speak  of  dirt  and  disorder  we  cannot 
suffer  to  continue,  of  women  ill-trained  for  motherhood 
and  worked  beyond  care  for  cleanliness,  of  a  vast  amount 
of  preventible  suffering  ?  And  these  figures  of  filth  and 
bad  clothing  are  paralleled  by  others  at  least  equally 
impressive,  displaying  emaciation,  under-nutrition,  ane- 
mia, and  every  other  painful  and  wretched  consequence 
of  neglect  and  insufficiency.  These  underfed,  under- 
clothed,  undersized  children  are  also  the  backward 
children;  they  grow  up  through  a  darkened,  joyless 
childhood  into  a  gray,  perplexing,  hopeless  world  that 
beats  them  down  at  last,  after  servility,  after  toil,  after 
crime  it  may  be  and  despair,  to  death. 

And  while  you  grasp  the  offence  of  these  facts,  do  not 
be  carried  away  into  supposing  that  this  age  is  therefore 
unprecedentedly  evil.  Such  dirt,  toil,  cruelty  have 
always  been,  —  have  been  in  larger  measure.  Don't 
idealize  the  primitive  cave,  the  British  hut,  the  peasant's 


GOOD  WILL  IN  MAN  15 

cottage,  damp  and  windowless,  the  filth-strewn,  plague- 
stricken,  mediaeval  town.  In  spite  of  all  these  crushed, 
mangled,  starved,  neglected  little  ones  about  the  feet  of 
this  fine  time,  in  spite  of  a  thousand  other  disorders  and 
miseries  almost  as  cruel,  the  fact  remains  that  this  age  has 
not  only  more  but  a  larger  percentage  of  healthy,  happy, 
kindly-treated  children  than  any  age  since  the  world 
began;  that  to  look  back  into  the  domestic  history  of 
other  times  is  to  see  greater  squalor  and  more  suffering. 
Why !  read  the  tombstones  and  monuments  in  any  old 
English  Church,  those,  I  mean,  that  date  from  earlier 
than  1800,  and  you  will  see  the  history  of  every  family, 
of  even  the  prosperous  county  families,  laced  with  the 
deaths  of  infants  and  children.  Nearly  half  of  them  died. 
Think  too  how  stern  was  the  upbringing.  And  always 
before  these  days  it  seemed  natural  to  make  all  but  the 
children  of  the  very  wealthy  and  very  refined,  fear  and 
work  from  their  earliest  years.  There  comes  to  us  too, 
from  these  days,  beautiful  furniture,  fine  literature,  paint- 
ings; but  there  comes,  too,  much  evidence  of  harsh  whip- 
pings, dark  imprisonments,  and  never  a  children's  book, 
hardly  the  broken  vestige  of  a  toy.  Bad  as  things  are, 
they  are  better  —  rest  assured  —  and  yet  they  are  still 
urgently  bad.  The  greater  evil  of  the  past  is  no  reason  for 
contentment  with  the  present.  But  it  is  an  earnest  for 
hoping  that  our  efforts,  and  that  Good  Will  of  which 


16  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

they  are  a  part  and  outcome,  may  still  go  on  bearing 
fruit  in  perpetually  dwindling  misery. 

§4 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  whole  spirit  and  quality  of 
both  the  evil  and  the  good  of  our  time,  and  of  the  at- 
titude not  simply  of  the  Socialist  but  of  every  sane 
reformer  toward  these  questions,  was  summarized  in  a 
walk  I  had  a  little  while  ago  with  a  friend  along  the 
Thames  Embankment,  from  Blackfriars  Bridge  to  West- 
minster. We  had  dined  together  and  we  went  there 
because  we  thought  that  with  a  fitful  moon  and  clouds 
adrift,  on  a  night  when  the  air  was  a  crystal  air  that 
gladdened  and  brightened,  that  crescent  of  great  build- 
ings and  steely,  soft-hurrying  water  must  needs  be 
altogether  beautiful.  And  indeed  it  was  beautiful:  the 
mysteries  and  mounting  masses  of  the  buildings  to  the 
right  of  us,  the  blurs  of  this  coloured  light  or  that, 
blue- white,  green- white,  amber  or  warmer  orange,  the 
rich  black  archings  of  Waterloo  Bridge,  the  rippled 
lights  upon  the  silent  flowing  river,  the  lattice  of  girders, 
and  the  shifting  trains  of  Charing  Cross  Bridge  —  their 
funnels  pouring  a  sort  of  hot-edged  moonlight  by  way 
of  smoke  —  and  then  the  sweeping  line  of  lamps,  the 
accelerated  run  and  diminuendo  of  the  Embankment 
lamps  as  one  came  into  sight  of  Westminster.     The  big 


GOOD  WILL  IN  MAN  17 

hotels  were  very  fine,  huge  swelHng  shapes  of  dun  dark- 
gray  and  brown,  huge  shapes  seamed  and  bursting  and 
fenestrated  with  illumination,  tattered  at  a  thousand 
windows  with  light  and  the  indistinct  glowing  sugges- 
tions of  feasting  and  pleasure.  And  dim  and  faint  above 
it  all  and  very  remote  was  the  moon's  dead  wan  face 
veiled  and  then  displayed. 

But  we  were  dashed  by  an  unanticipated  refrain  to 
this  succession  of  magnificent  things,  and  we  did  not  cry, 
as  we  had  meant  to  cry,  how  good  it  was  to  be  alive ! 
We  found  something  else,  something  we  had  forgotten. 

Along  the  Embankment,  you  see,  there  are  iron  seats 
at  regular  intervals,  seats  you  cannot  lie  upon  because 
iron  arm-rests  prevent  that,  and  each  seat,  one  saw  by 
the  lamplight,  was  filled  with  crouching  and  drooping 
figures.  Not  a  vacant  place  remained,  not  one  vacant 
place.  These  were  the  homeless,  and  they  had  come 
to  sleep  here.  Now  one  noted  a  poor  old  woman  with  a 
shameful  battered  straw  hat  awry  over  her  drowsing  face, 
now  a  young  clerk  staring  before  him  at  despair ;  now  a 
filthy  tramp,  and  now  a  bearded,  frock-coated,  collarless 
respectability ;  I  remember  particularly  one  ghastly  long 
white  neck  and  white  face  that  lopped  backward,  choked 
in  some  nightmare,  awakened,  clutched  with  a  bony  hand 
at  the  bony  throat,  and  sat  up  and  stared  angrily  as  we 
passed.     The  wind  had  a  keen  edge  that  night,  even  for 


18  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

US  who  had  dined  and  were  well-clad.  One  crumpled 
figure  coughed  and  went  on  coughing  —  damnably. 

"  It's  fine,"  said  I,  trying  to  keep  hold  of  the  effects  to 
which  this  line  of  poor  wretches  was  but  the  selvage; 
"  it's  fine !    But  I  can't  stand  this." 

"It  changes  all  that  we  expected,"  admitted  my 
friend,  after  a  silence. 

"Must  we  go  on  —  past  them  all?" 

"Yes.  I  think  we  ought  to  do  that.  It's  a  lesson 
perhaps  —  for  trying  to  get  too  much  beauty  out  of 
life  as  it  is,  and  forgetting.     Don't  shirk  it!" 

"Great  God!"  cried  I.  "But  must  life  always  be 
like  this?  I  could  die,  indeed,  I  would  willingly  jump 
into  this  cold  and  muddy  river  now,  if  by  so  doing  I 
could  stick  a  stiff  dead  hand  through  all  these  things 
into  the  future, — a  dead  commanding  hand  insistmg  with 
a  silent,  irresistible  gesture  that  this  waste  and  failure 
of  fife  should  cease,  and  cease  forever." 

"  But  it  does  cease  !  Each  year  in  its  proportions  it  is 
a  little  less." 

I  walked  in  silence,  and  my  companion  talked  by  my 
side. 

"  We  go  on.  Here  is  a  good  thing  done,  and  there  is 
a  good  thing  done.     The  Good  Will  in  man  — " 

"  Not  fast  enough.  It  goes  so  slowly  —  and  in  a  little 
while  we  too  must  die." 


GOOD  WILL  IN  MAN  19 

"It  can  be  done,"  said  my  companion. 

"It  could  be  avoided,"  said  I. 

"  It  shall  be  in  the  days  to  come.  There  is  food  enough 
for  all,  shelter  for  all,  wealth  enough  for  all.  Men  need 
only  know  it  and  will  it.     And  yet  we  have  this !" 

"And  so  much  like  this  !"  said  I. 

So  we  talked  and  were  tormented. 

And  I  remember  how  later  we  found  ourselves  on 
Westminster  Bridge,  looking  back  upon  the  long  sweep  of 
wrinkled  black  water  that  reflected  lights  and  palaces 
and  the  flitting  glow  of  steamboats,  and  by  that  time 
we  had  talked  ourselves  past  our  despair.  We  perceived 
that  what  was  splendid  remained  splendid,  that  what 
was  mysterious  remained  insoluble  for  all  our  pain  and 
impatience.  But  it  was  clear  to  us :  the  thing  for  us  two 
to  go  upon  was  not  the  good  of  the  present  nor  the  evil, 
but  the  effort  and  the  dream  of  the  finer  order,  the  fuller 
life,  the  banishment  of  suffering,  to  come. 

"We  want  all  the  beauty  that  is  here,"  said  my 
friend,  "and  more  also.  And  none  of  these  distresses. 
We  are  here  —  we  know  not  whence  nor  why  —  to  want 
that  and  to  struggle  to  get  it,  you  and  I  and  ten  thousand 
others  thinly  hidden  from  us  by  these  luminous  dark- 
nesses. We  work,  we  pass  —  whither  I  know  not,  but  out 
of  our  knowing.  But  we  work  —  we  are  spurred  to  work. 
That  yonder  —  those  people  are  the  spur  for  us  who 


20  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

cannot  answer  to  any  finer  appeal.  Each  in  our  measure 
must  do.  And  our  reward?  Our  reward  is  our  faith. 
Here  is  my  creed  to-night.  I  believe  out  of  me  and 
the  Good  Will  in  me  and  my  kind  there  comes  a  regen- 
erate world  —  cleansed  of  suffering  and  sorrow.  That 
is  our  purpose  here  —  to  forward  that.  It  gives  us 
work  for  all  our  lives.  Why  should  we  ask  to  know 
more  ?  Our  errors  —  our  sins  —  to-night  they  seem  to 
matter  very  little.  If  we  stumble  and  roll  in  the  mud, 
if  we  blunder  against  each  other  and  hurt  one  another." 

"We  have  to  go  on,"  said  my  friend  after  a  pause. 

We  stood  for  a  time  in  silence. 

One's  own  personal  problems  came  and  went  like  a 
ripple  in  the  water.  Even  that  whiskey  dealer's  adver- 
tisement upon  the  southern  bank  became  through 
some  fantastic  transformation  a  promise,  an  enigmatical 
promise,  flashed  up  the  river  reach  in  letters  of  fire. 
London  was  indeed  very  beautiful  that  night.  Without 
hope  she  would  have  seemed  not  only  as  beautiful  but 
as  terrible  as  a  black  panther  crouching  on  her  prey. 
Our  hope  redeemed  her.  Beyond  her  dark  and  mere- 
tricious splendours,  beyond  her  throned  presence,  jew- 
elled with  links  and  points  and  cressets  of  fire,  crowned 
with  stars,  robed  in  the  night,  hiding  cruelties,  I  caught 
a  moment's  vision  of  the  coming  City  of  Mankind,  of  a 
city  more  wonderful  than  all  my  dreaming,  full  of  life, 
full  of  youth,  full  of  the  spirit  of  creation. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   FUNDAMENTAL   IDEA   OF   SOCIALISM 

The  fundamental  idea  upon  which  Sociahsm  rests  is 
the  same  fundamental  idea  as  that  upon  which  all  real 
scientific  work  is  carried  on.  It  is  the  denial  that  chance 
impulse  and  individual  will  and  happening  constitute 
the  only  possible  methods  by  which  things  may  be  done 
in  the  world.  It  is  an  assertion  that  things  are  in  their 
nature  orderly;  that  things  may  be  computed,  may  be 
calculated  upon  and  foreseen.  In  the  spirit  of  this 
belief,  science  aims  at  a  systematic  knowledge  of  ma- 
terial things.  "Knowledge  is  power,"  knowledge  that 
is  frankly  and  truly  exchanged,  that  is  the  primary 
assumption  of  the  New  Atlantis  which  created  the 
Royal  Society  and  the  organization  of  research.  The 
Socialist  has  just  that  same  faith  in  the  order,  the 
knowableness  of  things  and  the  power  of  men  in  coopera- 
tion to  overcome  chance ;  but  to  him,  dealing  as  he  does 
with  the  social  affairs  of  men,  it  takes  the  form  not  of 
schemes  for  collective  research  but  for  collective  action 
and  the  creation  for  all  the  social  activities  of  man  of  a 
comprehensive  design.     While   science  gathers   knowl- 

21 


22  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

edge,  Socialism,  in  an  entirely  harmonious  spirit,  criti- 
cises and  develops  a  general  plan  of  social  life.  Each 
seeks  to  replace  disorder  by  order. 

Each  of  these  systems  of  ideas  has  of  course  its  limits ; 
we  know  in  matters  of  material  science  that  no  calcu- 
lated quantity  is  ever  exact,  no  outline  without  a  fog- 
ging at  the  edge,  no  angle  without  a  curve  at  the  apex, 
and  in  social  affairs  also,  there  must  needs  always  be 
individuality  and  the  unexpected  and  incalculable. 
But  these  things  do  not  vitiate  the  case  for  a  general 
order,  any  more  than  the  different  sizes  and  widths  and 
needs  of  the  human  beings  who  travel  prevent  our  having 
our  railway  carriages  and  seats  and  doors  of  a  generally 
convenient  size  nor  our  sending  everybody  over  the 
same  gauge  of  rail. 

Now  science  has  not  only  this  in  common  with  So- 
cialism that  it  has  grown  out  of  men's  courageous  con- 
fidence in  the  superiority  of  order  to  muddle,  but  these 
two  great  processes  of  human  thought  are  further  in 
sympathy  in  the  demand  they  make  upon  men  to  become 
less  egotistical  and  isolated.  The  whole  difference  of 
modern  scientific  research  from  that  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
the  secret  of  its  immense  successes,  lies  in  its  collective 
character,  in  the  fact  that  every  fruitful  experiment 
is  published,  every  new  discovery  of  relationships  ex- 
plained.    In  a  sense  scientific  research  is  a  triumph 


THE   FUNDAMENTAL  IDEA  OF  SOCIALISM         23 

over  natural  instinct,  over  that  mean  instinct  that 
makes  men  secretive,  that  makes  a  man  keep  knowledge 
to  himself  and  use  it  slyly  to  his  own  advantage.  The 
training  of  a  scientific  man  is  a  training  in  what  an  il- 
literate lout  would  despise  as  a  weakness,  it  is  a  training 
in  blabbing,  in  blurting  things  out,  in  telling  just  as 
plainly  as  possible  and  as  soon  as  possible  what  it  is  he 
has  found.  To  "keep  shut"  and  bright-eyed  and  to 
score  advantages,  that  is  the  wisdom  of  the  common 
stuff  of  humanity  still.  To  science  it  is  a  crime.  The 
noble  practice  of  that  noble  profession,  medicine,  for 
example,  is  to  condemn  as  a  quack  and  a  rascal  every 
man  who  uses  secret  remedies.  And  it  is  one  of  the  most 
encouraging  things  for  all  who  speculate  upon  human 
possibility  to  consider  the  multitude  of  men  in  the  last 
three  centuries  who  have  been  content  to  live  laborious, 
unprofitable,  and  for  the  most  part  quite  undistinguished 
lives  in  the  service  of  knowledge  that  has  transformed 
the  world.  Some  names  indeed  stand  out  by  virtue  of 
gigantic  or  significant  achievement,  such  names  as 
Bacon,  Newton,  Volta,  Darwin,  Faraday,  Joule,  but 
these  are  but  the  culminating  peaks  of  a  nearly  limitless 
Oberlandof  devoted  toiling  men, — men  one  could  list  by 
the  thousand.  The  rest  have  had  the  smallest  meed  of 
fame,  small  reward,  much  toil,  much  abandonment  of 
pleasure  for  their  lot.     One  thing  ennobles  them  all  in 


24  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

common,  — their  conquest  over  the  meanness  of  conceal- 
ment, their  systematic  application  of  energy  to  other 
than  personal  ends ! 

And  that,  too,  Socialism  preeminently  demands.  It 
applies  to  social  and  economic  relationships  the  same 
high  rule  of  frankness  and  veracity,  the  same  subordina- 
tion of  purely  personal  considerations  to  a  common  end 
that  science  demands  in  the  field  of  thought  and  knowl- 
edge. Just  as  science  aims  at  a  common  organized  body 
of  knowledge  to  which  all  its  servants  contribute  and  in 
which  they  share,  so  Socialism  insists  upon  its  ideal  of 
an  organized  social  order  which  every  man  serves  and  by 
which  every  man  benefits.  Their  common  enemy  is 
the  secret-thinking,  self-seeking  man.  Secrecy,  sub- 
terfuge and  the  private  gain:  these  are  the  enemies 
of  SociaHsm  and  the  adversaries  of  science.  At  times, 
I  will  admit,  both  Socialist  and  scientific  man  forget  this 
essential  sympathy.  You  will  find  specialized  scien- 
tific investigators  who  do  not  realize  they  are,  in  effect, 
Socialists,  and  Socialists  so  dull  to  the  quality  of  their 
own  professions,  that  they  gird  against  science,  and  are 
secretive  in  policy.  But  such  purblind  servants  of  the 
light  cannot  alter  the  essential  correlations  of  the  two 
systems  of  ideas. 

Now  the  Socialist,  inspired  by  this  conception  of  a 
possible,    frank    and    comprehensive    social    order   to 


THE  FUNDAMENTAL  IDEA  OF  SOCIALISM         25 

which  mean  and  narrow  things  must  be  sacrificed,  at- 
tacks and  criticises  the  existing  order  of  things  at  a  great 
number  of  points  and  in  a  great  variety  of  phraseology. 
At  all  points,  however,  you  will  find  upon  analysis  that 
his  criticism  amounts  to  a  declaration  that  there  is 
wanting  a  sufficiency  of  constructive  design.  That 
in  the  last  resort  is  what  he  always  comes  to. 

He  wants  a  complete  organization  for  all  those  human 
affairs  that  are  of  collective  importance.  He  says,  to 
take  instances  almost  haphazard,  that  our  ways  of 
manufacturing  a  great  multitude  of  necessary  things, 
of  getting  and  distributing  food,  of  conducting  all  sorts 
of  business,  of  begetting  and  rearing  children,  of  per- 
mitting diseases  to  engender  and  spread,  are  chaotic  and 
undisciplined;  so  badly  done  that  here  is  enormous 
hardship  and  there  enormous  waste,  here  excess  and 
degeneration,  and  there  privation  and  death.  He  de- 
clares that  for  these  collective  purposes,  in  the  satisfac- 
tion of  these  universal  needs,  mankind  presents  the 
appearance  and  follows  the  methods  of  a  mob  when  it 
ought  to  follow  the  method  of  an  army.  In  place  of  dis- 
orderly individual  effort,  each  man  doing  what  he 
pleases,  the  Socialist  wants  organized  effort  and  a  plan. 
And  while  the  scientific  man  seeks  to  make  an  orderly 
map  of  the  half-explored  wilderness  of  fact,  the  Socialist 
seeks  to  make  an  orderly  plan  for  the  half-conceived  wil- 
derness of  human  effort. 


26  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

That  and  no  other  is  the  essential  Socialist  idea. 

But  do  not  let  this  image  mislead  you.  When  the 
Socialist  speaks  of  a  plan,  he  knows  clearly  that  it  is  im- 
possible to  make  a  plan  as  an  architect  makes  a  plan, 
because  while  the  architect  deals  with  dead  stone  and 
timber,  the  statesman  and  Socialist  deal  with  living  and 
striving  things.  But  he  seeks  to  make  a  plan  as  one  designs 
and  lays  out  a  garden,  so  that  sweet  and  seemly  things 
may  grow,  wide  and  beautiful  vistas  open,  and  weeds  and 
foulness  disappear.  Always  a  garden  plan  develops  and 
renews  itself  and  discovers  new  possibilities,  but,  for  all 
that,  what  makes  all  its  graciousness  and  beauty  possible, 
is  the  scheme  and  the  persistent  intention,  the  watching 
and  the  waiting,  the  digging  and  burning,  the  weeder 
clips  and  the  hoe.  That  is  the  sort  of  plan,  a  living  plan 
for  things  that  live  and  grow,  that  the  Socialist  seeks  for 
social  and  national  life. 

To  make  all  this  distincter  I  will  show  the  planlessness 
of  certain  contemporary  things,  of  two  main  sets  of 
human  interests  in  fact,  and  explain  what  inferences 
a  Socialist  draws  in  these  matters.  You  will  then  see 
exactly  what  is  meant  when  we  deny  that  this  present 
state  of  affairs  has  any  constructive  plan,  and  you  will 
appreciate  in  the  most  generalized  form  the  nature  of 
the  constructive  plan  which  Socialists  are  making  and 
offering  the  world. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   FIRST  MAIN   GENERALIZATION   OP  SOCIALISM 
§1 

The  first  —  the  chief  aspect  of  social  hfe  in  relation  to 
which  the  Socialist  finds  the  world  now  planless  and 
drifting,  and  for  which  he  earnestly  propounds  the 
scheme  of  a  better  order  —  is  that  whole  side  of  existence 
which  is  turned  toward  children,  their  begetting  and  up- 
bringing, their  care  and  education.  Perpetually  the 
world  begins  anew,  perpetually  death  wipes  out  failure, 
disease,  unteachableness,  and  all  that  has  served  life 
and  accomplished  itself;  and  to  many  Socialists,  if  not 
to  all,  this  is  the  supreme  fact  in  the  social  scheme. 
The  whole  measure  of  progress  in  a  generation  is  the 
measure  in  which  the  children  improve  in  physical  and 
mental  quality,  in  moral  coordination,  in  opportunity, 
upon  their  parents.  Nothing  else  matters  in  the  way  of 
success  if  in  that  way  the  Good  Will  fails. 

Let  us  now  consider  how  such  matters  stand  in  our 

world  at  the  present  time,  and  let  us  examine  them  in 

the  light  of  the  Socialist  spirit.     I  have  already  quoted 

certain  facts  from  the  London  Education  Committee's 

27 


28  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

Report  by  which  you  have  seen  that  by  taking  a  school 
haphazard  —  dipping  a  ladle,  as  it  were,  into  the  welter 
of  the  London  population  —  we  find  more  than  eighty 
in  the  hundred  of  the  London  children  insufficiently  clad, 
more  than  half  unwholesomely  dirty,  —  eleven  per  cent 
verminous,  —  and  more  than  half  the  infants  infested 
with  vermin  !  The  nutrition  of  these  children  is  equally 
bad.  The  same  report  shows  clearly  that  differences 
in  clothing  and  cleanliness  are  paralleled  with  differences 
in  nutrition  that  are  equally  striking. 

"The  30  boys  of  the  lowest  class  showed  considerable  failure 
to  reach  the  average  weight  for  their  age  of  the  school ;  the 
average  shortage  per  boy  for  his  age  being  as  much  as  .7  kilo- 
gram. The  effect  upon  weight  was  more  striking  than  upon 
height,  as  the  average  failure  in  height  was  one  centimetre.  The 
141  boys  of  the  next  class  worked  out  at  exactly  the  average. 
The  49  well-clad  boys  showed  an  average  excess  per  age-weight 
of  .54  kilogram  and  age-height  of  1.8  centimetres." 

And  who  can  doubt  the  amount  of  mental  and  moral 
dwarfing  that  is  going  on  side  by  side  with  this  physical 
shortage  ? 

Now  it  may  be  argued  that  this  is  not  a  fair  sample 
of  our  general  population,  that  these  facts  have  been 
culled  from  a  special  section  of  the  population,  that  here 
we  are  dealing  with  the  congestion  of  London  slums  and 
altogether  exceptional  conditions.  This  is  not  so.  The 
school  examined  was  not  from  a  specially  bad  district. 


FIRST  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM      29 

And  it  happens  that  the  entire  working-class  population 
of  one  typical  English  town,  York,  has  been  exhaus- 
tively studied  by  Mr.  B.  S.  Rowntree,  and  here  are  some 
facts  from  his  result  that  quite  confirm  the  impression 
given  by  the  London  figures. 

"  It  was  quite  impossible  to  make  a  thorough  examination  of 
the  physical  condition  of  all  the  children,  but  as  they  came  up  to 
be  weighed  and  measured,  they  were  classified  under  the  four 
headings,  'Very  Good,'  'Good,'  'Fair,'  or  'Bad,'  by  an  investi- 
gator whose  training  and  previous  experience  in  similar  work 
enabled  her  to  make  a  reliable,  even  if  rough,  classification.  .  .  . 

"'Bad'  implies  that  the  child  bore  physical  traces  of  under- 
feeding and  neglect. 

"The  numbers  classified  under  the  various  heads  were  as  fol- 
lows :  — 


BOYS 


Very  Good 
per  cent. 

Good 
per  cent. 

Fair 
per  cent. 

Bad 
per  cent 

Section  1. 

(poorest) 

Section  2. 

(middle) 

Section  3. 

(highest) 

2.8 

7.4 

27.4 

14.6 
20.1 
33.8 

31. 

53.7 

27.4 

51.6 
18.8 
11.4 

GIRLS 


Section  1. 
(poorest) 
Section  2. 
(middle) 
Section  3. 
(highest) 


2.1 

7.5 

27.2 


14.6 

31. 

21.2 

50.4 

38. 

23.1 

52.3 
20.9 
11.7 


30  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

"It  will  be  seen  that  the  proportion  of  children  classed  as 
'very  good'  in  Section  3  is  about  ten  times  as  large  as  in  the 
poorest  section,  and  that  more  than  half  of  the  children  in  the 
poorest  section  are  classed  as  'bad.' 

"These  'bad'  children  presented  a  pathetic  spectacle;  all 
bore  some  mark  of  the  hard  conditions  against  which  they  were 
struggling.  Puny  and  feeble  bodies,  dirty  and  often  sadly  in- 
sufficient clothing,  sore  eyes,  in  many  cases  acutely  inflamed 
through  continued  want  of  attention,  filthy  heads,  cases  of  hip 
disease,  swollen  glands  —  all  these  and  other  signs  told  the  same 
tale  of  privation  and  neglect.  It  will  be  noticed  that  the  con- 
dition of  the  children  in  Section  2  (middle-class  labour)  comes 
about  halfway  between  Sections  1  and  3.  In  considering  the 
above  table  it  must  of  course  be  remembered  that  there  was  no 
absolute  standard  by  which  each  child  could  be  judged,  but  the 
broad  comparison  between  the  different  classes  is  unimpeachable. 
The  table  affords  further  evidence  of  serious  physical  deteriora- 
tion amongst  the  poorest  section  of  the  community." 

And  if  York  and  London  will  not  satisfy,  let  the  reader 
take  Edinburgh,  whose  Charity  Organization  Society  has 
produced  an  admirable  but  infinitely  distressing  report 
of  the  physical  conditions  of  the  school  children  there. 
It  gives  a  summary  account  of  the  homes  of  1400  chil- 
dren in  one  of  the  Edinburgh  Elementary  Schools, 
selected  because  it  represented  a  fair  mixture  of  pros- 
perous and  unprosperous  people.  I  take  the  first  10 
entries  of  this  list  just  as  they  come,  representing  38 
children,  and  they  are  a  fair  sample  of  the  whole  list. 
No  amount  of  writing  could  make  these  little  thumb-nail 


FIRST   MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM     31 

sketches  of  the  reality  of  domestic  life  among  our  popu- 
lation to-day  more  impressive  than  they  are,  thus  bar- 
renly given. 

1.  A  bad  home.  Woman  twice  married;  second  husband 
deserted  her  six  or  seven  years  ago  and  she  now  keeps  a  bad 
house  in  which  much  drinking  and  rioting  goes  on.  Daughter 
on  stage  sends  10/ —  a  week,  son  is  out  of  work.  A  son  is  in  an 
institution.  All  as  filthy  as  is  the  house.  The  food  is  irregular. 
Two  children  have  had  free  dinners  from  school  this  and  last 
winter,  clothes  were  also  given  for  one  each  time.  The  boy 
attends  regularly.  The  woman  is  a  hard  drinker,  and  gets  money 
in  undesirable  ways.  The  eldest  child  has  glands,  neck;  hair 
not  good  but  clean;  fleabitten.  The  second  child,  adenoids 
and  tonsils.  Housing :  five  in  one  room.  Evidence  from  Police, 
School  Charity,  Headmistress,  School  Officers,  and  Doctors. 

2.  The  drinking  capacity  of  this  family  cannot  be  too  much 
emphasized.  The  parents  can't  agree,  and  live  apart,  the  man 
allowing  7/6  a  week  when  girl  is  with  mother,  and  5/ — when 
she  comes  to  him.  She  is  verminous  and  very  badly  kept, 
Mother  can't  get  charring,  as  she  lives  in  so  bad  a  neighbourhood, 
so  means  to  move ;  at  present  she  keeps  other  women's  babies  at 
6d.  a  day  each.  Elder  boy  out  of  work,  a  tidy  lad,  reads  in  Free 
Library.  One  child  has  died.  Housing:  three  in  one  room. 
House  not  so  very  untidy.  Evidence  from  Pohce,  Church,  and 
Officer. 

3.  A  miserable  family  and  in  very  wretched  circumstances. 
Father  deserts  home  at  intervals,  but  last  time  seemed  "sent 
back  by  Providence,"  as  the  works  in  the  town  he  was  in  were 
burnt  down.  Children  starving  in  his  absence;  one  had  pneu- 
monia, and  died  since  of  the  effects.  The  eldest  child  has  ade- 
noids; the  second,  uticaria;  lice,  bad;   clothes  full  of  pediculi. 


32  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

Housing :  six  in  two  rooms.  Mother  hardworking,  does  her  best, 
but  has  chronic  bronchitis ;  does  not  keep  house  overtidy.  The 
two  elder  boys  are  very  idle,  tiresome  fellows,  and  worry  the 
father  a  great  deal.  They  improved  and  found  work  during  the 
year  following  the  visit,  in  which  time  the  father  got  into  decent 
work  in  the  city.  The  S.P.C.C.  branch  had  to  interfere  on 
behalf  of  small  children.  Three  dead  since  marriage,  when 
parents  were  at  ages  23  and  20.  Food  good  when  there  is  any. 
School  gave  free  dinners  and  clothes  to  two.  Evidence  from 
Police,  S.P.C.C.  branch.  School  Charity,  Parish  Sister,  Employer, 
Headmistress,  School  Officer,  and  Doctors. 

4.  The  father  a  complete  wreck  through  intemperate  and  fast 
living;  speculation  first  brought  him  down.  Was  later  moved 
to  hospital  where  he  died.  Had  worked  on  railway  a  little 
time.  Mother  hardworking,  works  out,  home  untidy  owing 
to  her  being  out  so  much.  She  pays  rent  regularly,  and  does  her 
best.  An  elder  boy  groom,  fed  and  clad  by  his  master,  sends 
home  what  he  can.  Eldest  boy  does  odd  jobs,  but  seems  a 
wastrel.  Parish  gave  7/6  after  father  ill,  and  feeds  four  children 
now.  Winter  of  visit  school  dined  five  free  daily,  and  clothed 
three,  and  previous  winter  three  had  free  dinners  and  two  had 
clothes.  A  schoolboy  earns.  The  twins  are  delicate.  There 
are  two  lodgers.  The  eldest  child  very  dirty;  the  second, 
glands;  the  third,  knock-kneed,  pigeon  chest,  very  feeble,  en- 
larged radices.  Three  children  have  died.  Housing:  nine  in 
three  rooms.  Evidence  from  Police,  Poor-law  Officer,  Parish 
Sister,  School  Charity,  Army  Charity,  Children's  Employment, 
School  Officer,  Factor,  Pawnbroker,  and  Doctors. 

5.  The  mother,  a  nice,  clean,  tidy  woman,  doing  pretty  well 
by  the  children.  They  kept  a  little  shop  for  a  time,  and  she 
used  to  do  a  day's  charring  now  and  then,  but  has  too  many  babies 
now.     Parents  married  at  21  and  18  respectively;  two  children 


FIRST  MAIN   GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM      33 

dead  and  another  expected.  He  reads  papers  a  good  deal,  gets 
them  out  of  trains.  This  is  his  first  spell  of  regular  work.  Two 
boys  sell  papers,  and  a  mission  gives  cheap  meal.  Food  none 
too  plentiful.  One  child  gets  free  dinners.  The  eldest  child  has 
glands;  impetigo ;  thin  and  badly  nourished.  The  second,  glands, 
hair  lice,  and  nits  bad.  The  third  boils  on  neck;  glands;  thin. 
The  fourth,  glands.  Housing:  eight  in  two  rooms.  They  are 
in  two  thrift  societies.  Evidence  from  Schoolmaster,  Police, 
Parish  Sister,  Club,  Army  Charity,  Charity  School,  Pawnbroker, 
and  Doctors. 

6.  Father  works  in  one  shop  in  daytime,  and  in  a  public  house 
at  night.  Rather  soft;  but  wife  industrious  and  energetic  and 
does  her  best.  Children  well-fed  and  regular  at  school.  Two 
children  have  enlarged  tonsils.  They  get  no  help,  and  belong 
to  two  thrift  societies.  One  of  six  children  dead  in  ten  years 
of  married  life.  Housing :  seven  in  two  rooms.  Evidence  from 
Police,  Doctors,  Society,  Church,  Mission,  Club,  Headmistress, 
Charity   School,    and    Pawnbrokers. 

7.  A  family  where  parents  are  much  given  to  drink;  father 
invalided  and  being  helped  by  a  Sick  Society,  3/ —  a  week,  and 
Parish  5/ —  a  week.  Housing :  five  in  two  rooms.  They  are 
in  a  burying  club.  Children  fleabitten.  Two  have  died.  Food 
is  rather  scanty.  Wife  very  quarrelsome  and  drunken.  The 
boys  play  truant  often.  Two  were  given  free  food  and  clothes 
two  winters  ago,  and  this  winter  one  has  free  dinners  and  clothes 
given.  A  mission  has  given  cheap  clothes.  Evidence  from 
Schoolmaster,  Police,  Poor-law  Officer,  C.O.S.  branch.  Church, 
School  Charity,  Sick  Society,  Children's  Employment,  Factor, 
School  Officer,  Charity  School,  Pawnbroker,  and  Doctors. 

8.  Fairly  decent  family;  mother  washes  out,  and  man  has 
very  early  work.  He  drinks,  and  his  employment  is  somewhat 
irregular.     A  son  in  the  country  on  a  farm,  and  two  dead.     They 

D 


84  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

were  married  at  21  and  18.  The  food  is  erratic,  the  children 
getting  "pieces"  at  dinner-time,  or  free  school  dinners;  or  when 
mother  comes  home,  soup  with  her.  The  children  are  rather 
neglected,  and  the  police  give  the  parents  an  indifferent  char- 
acter. The  eldest  child  has  eustacian  catarrh  and  naso-pharyn- 
gitis;  glands.  The  second,  enlarged  uvula.  Housing:  four  in 
two  very  small  rooms.  Evidence  from  Schoolmaster,  Police, 
Parish  Sister,  Church,  Factor,  and  Doctors. 

9.  Father  an  old  soldier  without  a  pension,  who  reads  novels. 
All  the  small  children  were  found  eating  a  large  meal  of  ham  and 
eggs  and  strong  tea  after  8  p.m.,  he  in  bed  at  the  time.  They  have 
lapsed  from  thrift  society  membership.  They  are  extremely 
filthy  and  the  man  drinks.  A  mission  sells  them  meal  cheap. 
Wife  18  at  marriage  and  one  child  died.  They  feed  pretty 
largely  but  unhealthily,  and  eat  "pieces"  at  lunch  time.  At 
time  of  visit,  though  very  dirty,  they  were  tidier  than  ever 
found  before.  The  eldest  child  has  chronic  suppuration  and 
large  perforation  of  ear.  Housing:  five  in  two  rooms.  Evi- 
dence from  Police,  Parish  Sister,  Factor,  Soldiers'  Society, 
Charity  School,  and  Doctors. 

10.  The  man  a  carter,  who  drank  to  a  certain  extent,  and 
died  some  months  after  visit,  when  a  Charity  gave  her  help.  She 
had  an  illegitimate  child  and  two  others.  He  was  careless,  and 
both  neglected  church  going.  No  medical  evidence.  Housing : 
five  in  two  rooms.  Evidence  from  Police,  two  Churches, 
Parish  Sister,  Employer,  and  Charity  School. 

§2 

Now  to  the  Socialist,  as  to  any  one  who  has  caught 
any  tinge  of  the  modern  scientific  spirit,  these  facts  pre- 
sent themselves  simply  as  an  atrocious  failure  of  states- 


FIRST  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM      35 

manship.  Indeed,  a  social  system  in  which  the  mass  of 
the  population  is  growing  up  under  these  conditions,  he 
scarcely  recognizes  as  a  state,  rather  it  seems  to  him  a 
mere  preliminary  higgledy-piggledy  aggregation  of  hu- 
man beings,  out  of  which  a  state  has  to  be  made.  It 
seems  to  him  that  this  wretched  confusion  of  affairs  which 
repeats  itself  throughout  the  country,  wherever  popu- 
lation has  gathered,  must  be  due  to  more  than  individual 
inadequacy;  it  must  be  due  to  some  general  and  essen- 
tial failure,  some  unsoundness  in  the  broad  principles 
upon  which  the  whole  organization  is  conducted. 

What  is  this  general  principle  of  failure  beneath  all 
these  particular  cases? 

In  any  given  instance  this  or  that  reason  for  the 
failure  of  a  child  may  be  given.  In  one  case  it  may  be 
the  father  or  mother  drinks,  in  another  that  the  child  is 
an  orphan  neglected  by  aunt  or  stepmother,  in  another 
that  the  mother  is  an  invalid  or  a  sweated  worker  too 
overwrought  to  do  much  for  him,  or,  though  a  good- 
hearted  soul,  she  is  careless  and  dirty  or  ignorant,  or 
that  she  is  immoral  and  reckless,  and  so  on  and  so  on. 
Our  haphazard  sample  of  ten  Scotch  cases  gives  instances 
of  nearly  all  these  alternatives.  And  from  these  proxi- 
mate causes  one  might  work  back  to  more  general  ones, 
to  the  necessity  of  controlling  the  drink  traffic,  of  abol- 
ishing sweating,  of  shortening  women's  hours  of  labour, 


36  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

of  suppressing  vice.  But  for  the  present  argument  it  is 
not  necessary  to  follow  up  these  special  causes.  We 
can  make  a  wider  generalization.  For  our  present  analy- 
sis it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  one  more  general  malad- 
justment covers  every  case  of  neglected  or  ill  brought- 
up  children  in  the  world,  and  that  is  this,  that  with  or 
without  a  decent  excuse,  the  parent  has  not  been  equal  to 
the  task  of  rearing  a  civiUzed  citizen.  We  have  de- 
manded too  much  from  the  parent,  materially  and 
morally,  and  the  10  cases  we  have  quoted  are  just  10 
out  of  10,000,000  of  the  replies  to  that  demand.  Of 
52  children  born,  14  are  dead;  and  of  the  remainder 
we  can  hardly  regard  more  than  13  as  being  tolerably 
reared. 

Is  it  not  obvious  then  that,  unless  we  are  content  that 
things  should  remain  as  they  are,  we  must  put  the  rela- 
tions of  parent  to  child  on  some  securer  and  more  whole- 
some footing  than  they  are  at  the  present  time  ?  We 
demand  too  much  from  the  parent,  and  this  being 
recognized,  clearly  there  are  only  two  courses  open  to 
us.  The  first  is  to  relieve  the  parents  by  lowering  the 
standard  of  our  demand;  the  second  is  to  reheve  them 
by  supplementing  their  efforts. 

The  first  course,  the  Socialist  holds,  is  not  only  cruel 
and  unjust  to  the  innocent  child,  but  an  entirely  bar- 
baric and  retrogressive  thing  to  do.     It  is  a  frank  aban- 


FIRST  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM     37 

donment  of  all  ideas  of  progress  and  world  betterment. 
He  puts  it  aside,  therefore,  and  turns  to  the  alternative. 
In  doing  that  he  comes  at  once  into  harmony  with  all  the 
developmental  tendencies  of  the  last  hundred  years.  For 
a  hundred  years  there  has  been  going  on  a  process  of 
supplementing  and  controlling  parental  effort. 

A  hundred  years  or  so  ago  the  parent  was  the  supreme 
authority  in  the  child's  destiny  —  short  only  of  direct 
murder.  Parents  were  held  responsible  for  their  chil- 
dren's rearing  to  God  alone ;  should  they  fail,  individual, 
good-hearted  people  might,  if  they  thought  proper,  step 
in,  give  food,  give  help — provided  the  parents  consented, 
that  is;  but  it  was  not  admitted  that  the  community  as 
a  whole  was  concerned  in  the  matter.  Parents  (and 
guardians  in  the  absence  of  parents)  were  allowed  to 
starve  their  children,  leave  them  naked,  prey  upon  their 
children  by  making  them  work  in  factories  or  as  chimney 
sweeps  and  the  like ;  the  law  was  silent,  the  state  acqui- 
esced. Good-hearted  parents,  on  the  other  hand,  who 
were  unsuccessful  in  the  world's  affairs  had  the  torment 
of  seeing  their  children  go  short  of  food  and  garments, 
grow  up  ignorant  and  feeble,  their  only  hope  of  help  the 
chance  kindliness  of  their  more  prosperous  neighbours  and 
the  ill-organized  charities  left  by  the  benevolent  dead. 

Through  all  the  nineteenth  century  the  irresistible 
logic  of  necessity  has  been  forcing  people  out  of  the  belief 


38  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

in  that  state  of  affairs,  has  been  making  them  see  the 
impossibility  of  leaving  things  so  absolutely  to  parental 
discretion  and  conscience,  has  been  forcing  them  toward 
a  constructive  and  organizing ;  that  is  to  say,  toward  a 
Socialist  attitude.  Essentially  the  Socialist  attitude  is 
this:  an  insistence  that  parentage  can  no  longer  be 
regarded  as  an  isolated  private  matter ;  that  the  welfare 
of  the  children  is  of  universal  importance,  and  must, 
therefore,  be  finally  a  matter  of  collective  concern.  The 
state,  which  a  hundred  years  ago  was  utterly  careless 
of  children,  is  now  every  year  becoming  more  and 
more  their  guardian,  their  over-parent. 

To-day  the  power  of  the  parents  is  limited  in  ways 
that  would  have  seemed  incredible  a  hundred  years  ago. 
In  the  first  place  they  must  no  longer  unrestrictedly  use 
their  very  young  children  to  earn  money  for  them  in  toil 
and  suffering.  A  great  mass  of  labour  legislation  for- 
bids them.  In  the  next  place  their  right  to  inflict 
punishment  or  to  hurt  wantonly  has  been  limited  in 
many  ways.  The  private  enterprises  of  charitable  or- 
ganizations for  the  prevention  of  cruelty  and  neglect  has 
led  to  a  growing  system  of  law  in  this  direction  also. 
Nor  may  a  parent  now  prevent  a  child  getting  some 
rudiments  of  an  education. 

Between  the  parent  and  Heaven  now,  in  addition  to 
the  more  or  less  legalized  voluntary  interference  of  well- 


FIRST  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM     39 

disposed  private  people,  there  do  appear  certain  rare 
functionaries  who  —  while  they  interfere  not  at  all 
between  good  and  competent  parents  and  their  children 
—  do  in  certain  instances  save  a,  parental  default  from 
its  complete  fruition.  There  are  the  school  inspector 
and  the  sanitary  officer.  Then  there  are,  in  the  London 
City  Council  area,  the  ''  Ringworm  "  nurses  who  examine 
the  children  systematically,  and  by  means  of  certain 
white  and  red  cards  of  remonstrance  and  warning,  in- 
timidate the  parent  into  good  behaviour  or  pave  the  way 
for  a  prosecution,  and  there  is  the  factory  inspector  — 
and  in  certain  cases  the  police.  All  these  functionaries 
and  "accessory  consciences"  have  been  thrust  in  be- 
tween the  supremacy  of  the  parent  and  the  child  within 
the  century. 

So  much  the  Socialist  regards  as  all  to  the  good,  as  all 
in  the  direction  of  that  great  constructive  plan  of  or- 
ganized human  welfare  at  which  he  aims.  And  they  all 
amount  to  a  destruction,  so  much  with  this  and  so 
much  with  that,  of  the  independence  of  the  family, 
an  invasion  of  the  old  moral  isolation  of  parent  and 
child. 

But  while  a  number  of  people  (who  haven't  read  the 
Edinburgh  Charity  Organization  Society's  Report)  are 
content  to  regard  these  interventions  as  "going  far 
enough,"  the  Socialist  considers  these  things  as  only  the 


40  NEW  WORLDS   FOR   OLD 

beginning  of  the  organization  of  the  welfare  of  the 
nation's  children.  You  will  notice  that  all  these  laws 
and  regulations  at  which  we  have  glanced  are  in  the 
nature  of  prohibitions  or  compulsions;  few  have  any 
element  of  aid.  By  virtue  of  them  we  have  diminished 
the  power  of  the  inferior  sort  of  parents  to  do  evil  by 
their  child,  but  we  have  done  little  or  nothing  to  in- 
crease and  stimulate  their  powers  to  do  good.  We  may 
prevent  them  doing  some  sorts  of  evil  things  to  the  child ; 
they  may  not  give  it  poisonous  things,  or  let  it  live  in 
morally  or  physically  contagious  places,  but  we  do  not 
insure  that  they  shall  give  it  wholesome  things  —  better 
than  they  had  themselves.  We  must,  if  our  work  is  ever 
to  reach  effectual  fruition,  go  on  to  the  logical  comple- 
tion of  that  process  of  supplementing  the  parent  that 
the  nineteenth  century  began. 

Consider,  for  instance,  the  circumstances  of  parentage 
among  the  large  section  of  the  working  classes  whose 
girls  and  women  engage  in  factory  labour.  In  many 
cases  the  earnings  of  the  woman  are  vitally  necessary  to 
the  solvency  of  the  family  budget,  the  father's  wages  do 
not  nearly  cover  the  common  expenditure.  In  some 
cases  the  women  are  unmarried,  or  the  man  is  an  in- 
valid or  out  of  work.  Consider  such  a  woman  on  the 
verge  of  motherhood.  Either  she  must  work  in  a  fac- 
tory right  up  to  the  birth  of  her  child  —  and  so  damage 


FIRST  MAIN   GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM      41 

its  health  through  her  strain  and  fatigue/  —  or  she  must 
give  up  her  work,  lose  money,  and  go  short  of  food  and 
necessities  and  so  damage  the  coming  citizen.  More- 
over, after  the  child  is  born,  either  she  must  feed  it  ar- 
tificially and  return  to  work  (and  prosperity)  soon,  with 
a  very  great  risk  indeed  that  the  child  will  die,  or  she 
must  stay  at  home  to  nourish  and  tend  it  —  until  her 
landlord  sells  her  furniture  and  turns  her  out ! 

Now  it  does  not  need  that  you  should  be  a  Socialist 
to  see  how  cruel  and  ridiculous  it  is  to  have  mothers  in 
such  a  dilemma.  But  while  people  who  are  not  Social- 
ists have  no  remedy  to  suggest,  or  only  immediate  and 
partial  remedies,  such,  for  example,  as  the  forbidding 
of  factory  work  to  women  who  are  about  to  be  or  have 
recently  been  mothers,  —  an  expedient  which  is  bound  to 
produce  a  plentiful  crop  of  "concealment  of  birth"  and 
infanticide  convictions, — the  Socialist  does  proffer  a  gen- 
eral principle  to  guide  the  community  in  dealing  not  only 
with  this  particular  hardship,  but  with  all  the  kindred 
hardships  which  form  a  system  with  it.  He  declares  that 
we  are  here  in  the  presence  of  an  unsound  and  harmful 
way  of  regarding  parentage;  that  we  treat  it  as  a 
private  affair,  that  we  are  still  disposed  to  assume  that 

*  The  hard  facts  of  the  case  are  put  very  clearly  and  quite  in- 
vincibly, by  Miss  Margaret  Macmillan  in  Infant  Mortality.  See 
also  The  Babies'  Tribute  to  the  Modern  Moloch,  by  F.  Victor  Fisher. 
(Twentieth  Century  Press.     Id.) 


42  NEW  WORLDS   FOR   OLD 

people's  children  are  almost  as  much  their  private  con- 
cern as  their  cats,  and  as  little  entitled  to  public  pro- 
tection and  assistance.  The  right  view,  he  maintains, 
is  altogether  opposed  to  this ;  parentage  is  a  public  ser- 
vice and  a  public  duty ;  a  good  mother  is  the  most  precious 
type  of  connnon  individual  a  community  can  have,  and 
to  let  a  woman  on  the  one  hand  earn  a  living  as  we  do,  by 
sewing  tennis-balls  or  making  cardboard  boxes  or  calico, 
and  on  the  other,  not  simply  not  to  pay  her,  but  to  im- 
poverish her  because  she  bears  and  makes  sacrifices 
to  rear  children,  is  the  most  irrational  aspect  of  all  the 
evolved  and  chancy  ideas  and  institutions  that  make  up 
the  modern  state.  It  is  as  if  we  believed  our  civiliza- 
tion existed  to  make  cheap  cotton  and  tennis-balls  instead 
of  fine  human  lives. 

The  Socialist  takes  all  that  the  nineteenth  century  has 
done  in  remedial  legislation  as  a  mere  earnest  of  all  that 
it  has  still  to  do.  He  works  for  a  consistent  application 
of  the  principles  that  England,  for  example,  tacitly  ad- 
mitted when  she  opened  her  public  elementary  schools 
and  compelled  the  children  to  come  in ;  the  principle  that 
the  Community  as  a  whole  is  the  general  Over-Parent 
of  all  its  children;  that  the  parents  must  be  made 
answerable  to  the  community  for  the  welfare  of  their 
children,  for  their  clear  minds  and  clean  bodies,  their 
eyesight  and  weight  and  training;    and  that,  on  the 


FIRST  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM    43 

other  hand,  the  parents  who  do  their  duty  well  are  as 
much  entitled  to  payment  and  economic  security  as  a 
soldier,  a  judge,  or  any  other  sort  of  public  servant. 

§3 

Now  do  not  imagine  the  case  for  the  state  being  re- 
garded as  the  Over-Parent  and  for  the  payment  and 
financial  support  of  parents  is  based  simply  upon  the 
consideration  of  neglected,  underfed,  under-educated, 
and  poverty-blighted  children.  No  doubt  in  every  one 
of  the  great  civilized  countries  of  the  world  at  the  present 
time  such  children  are  to  be  counted  by  the  hundred 
thousand,  by  the  million;  but  there  is  a  much  stronger 
case  to  be  stated  in  regard  to  that  possibly  greater  mul- 
titude of  parents  who  are  not  in  default,  those  common 
people,  the  mass  of  our  huge  populations,  the  wives  of 
the  moderately  skilled  workers  or  the  reasonably  com- 
fortable employees,  of  the  middling  sort  of  people,  the 
two,  three,  and  four  hundred  pounds  a  year  families,  who 
toil  and  deny  themselves  for  love  of  their  children,  and  do 
contrive  to  rear  them  cleanly,  passably  well-grown, 
decent-minded,  taught,  and  intelligent  to  serve  the 
future.  Consider  the  enormous  unfairness  with  which 
we  treat  them,  the  way  in  which  the  modern  state 
trades  upon  their  instincts,  their  affections,  their  sense 


44  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

of  duty  and  self-respect,  to  get  from  them  for  nothing 
the  greatest  social  service  in  the  world. 

For  while  the  least  fortunate  sort  of  children  have  at 
any  rate  the  protection  of  the  police  and  school  in- 
spectors, and  the  baser  sort  of  parent  has  all  sorts  of  pub- 
lic and  quasi-public  helps  and  doles,  the  families  that 
make  the  middle  mass  of  our  population  are  still  in  the 
position  of  the  families  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  and  have 
no  help  under  heaven  against  the  world.  It  matters 
not  how  well  the  home  of  the  skilled  artisan's  wife  or  the 
small  business  man's  wife  has  been  managed,  she  may 
have  educated  her  children  marvellously,  they  may  be 
clean,  strong,  courteous,  intelligent  —  if  the  husband 
gets  out  of  work  or  suffers  from  business  ill-luck  or  trade 
depression  or  chances  to  be  killed  uninsured,  down  they 
all  go  to  want.  Such  insurance  as  they  are  ablo  to 
make  —  and  it  needs  a  tremendously  heavy  premium  to 
secure  an  insurance  that  will  not  mean  a  heavy  fall  of 
income  with  the  bread-winner's  death  —  must  needs 
be  in  a  private  insurance  office,  and  there  is  no  efTectual 
guarantee  for  either  honesty  or  solvency  in  that.  In 
most  of  the  petty  insurance  business  the  thrifty  poor 
are  enormously  overcharged  and  overreached.  Rumour 
has  been  busy,  and  I  fear  only  too  justly,  with  the 
financial  outlook  of  the  great  Friendly  Societies  upon 
which  the  scanty  security  of  so  many  working-class 


FIRST  MAIN   GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM     45 

families  depends.  Such  investments  as  the  lower  and 
middle-class  father  makes  of  surplus  profits  and  savings 
must  be  made  in  ignorance  of  the  manoeuvres  of  the  big 
and  often  quite  ruthless  financiers  who  control  the 
world  of  prices.  If  he  builds  or  trades,  he  does  so  as 
a  small  investor,  at  the  highest  cost  and  lowest  profit. 
Half  the  big  businesses  in  the  world  have  been  made 
out  of  the  lost  savings  of  the  small  investor,  a  point 
to  which  I  shall  return  later.  People  talk  as  though 
Socialism  proposed  to  rob  the  thrifty  industrious  man 
of  his  savings.  He  could  not  be  more  systematically 
robbed  of  his  savings  than  he  is  at  the  present  time. 
Nowhere  is  there  security,  not  even  in  the  gilt-edged 
respectability  of  Consols  which  in  the  last  ten  years  have 
fallen  from  114  to  under  85.  Consider  the  adventure 
of  the  thrifty,  well-meaning  citizen  who  used  his  savings- 
bank  hoard  to  buy  Consols  at  the  former  price  and  now 
finds  himself  the  poorer  for  not  having  buried  his  savings 
in  his  garden.  The  middling  sort  of  man  saves  for  the 
sake  of  wife  and  child ;  our  state  not  only  fails  to  protect 
him  from  the  adventures  of  the  manipulating  financier, 
but  it  deliberately  avoids  competition  with  banker, 
insurance  agent,  and  promoter.  In  no  way  can  the 
middle-class  or  artisan  parent  escape  the  financiers' 
power  and  get  real  security  for  his  home  or  his  children's 
upbringing. 


46  NEW  WORLDS   FOR   OLD 

Not  only  is  every  parent  of  any  but  the  richest  classes 
worried  and  discouraged  by  the  universal  insecurity  of 
outlook  in  this  private  adventure  world,  but  at  every 
turn  his  efforts  to  do  his  best  for  his  children  are  dis- 
couraged. If  he  has  no  children,  he  will  have  all  his 
income  to  spend  on  his  own  pleasure ;  he  needs  only  live 
in  a  little  house;  he  pays  nothing  for  school,  less  for 
doctor,  less  for  all  the  needs  of  life ;  and  he  is  taxed  less, 
his  income  tax  is  the  same,  no  bigger;  his  rent,  his  rates, 
his  household  bills  are  all  less. 

The  state  will  not  even  help  him  to  a  tolerable  home, 
to  wholesome  food,  to  needed  fuel  for  the  new  citizens 
he  is  training  for  it.  The  state  nowadays  in  its  slow 
awakening  does  show  a  certain  concern  in  the  housing 
of  the  lowest  classes,  a  concern  alike  stimulated  and 
supplemented  by  such  fine  charities  as  Peabody's,  for 
example;  but  no  one  stands  between  the  two  hundred 
a  year  man  and  his  landlord  in  the  pitiless  struggle  to  get. 
For  every  need  of  his  children  whom  he  toils  to  make 
into  good  men  and  women,  he  must  pay  a  toll  of  owner's 
profits,  he  must  trust  to  the  anything  but  intelligent 
greed  of  private  enterprise. 

The  state  will  not  even  insist  there  is  built  for  his 
class  a  sufficiency  of  comfortable,  sanitary  homes ;  if  he 
wants  the  elementary  convenience  of  a  bathroom,  he 
must  pay  extra  toll  to  the  water  shareholder;   his  gas 


FIRST  MAIN   GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM      47 

is  as  cheap  in  quality  and  dear  in  price  as  it  can  be ;  his 
bread  and  milk,  under  the  laws  of  supply  and  demand, 
are  at  the  legal  minimum  of  wholesomeness ;  the  coal 
trade  cheerfully  raises  his  coal  in  midwinter  to  ruinous 
prices.  He  buys  clothes  of  shoddy  and  boots  of  brown 
paper.  To  get  any  other  is  nearly  impossible  for  a  man 
with  three  hundred  pounds  a  year.  His  newspapers, 
which  are  supported  by  advertisers  and  financiers,  in 
order  to  hide  the  obvious  injustice  of  this  one-man  fight 
against  the  allied  forces  of  property,  din  in  his  ears  that 
his  one  grievance  is  local  taxation,  his  one  remedy  "to 
keep  down  the  rates"  —  the  "rates"  which  do  at  least 
repair  his  roadway,  police  his  streets,  give  him  open 
spaces  for  his  babies,  and  help  educate  his  children,  and 
which,  moreover,  constitute  a  burthen  he  might  by  a 
little  intelligent  political  action  shift  quite  easily  from 
his  own  shoulders  to  the  broad  support  of  capital  and 
land. 

If  the  children  of  the  decent  skilled  artisan  and  middle 
class  suffer  less  obviously  than  the  poorer  sort  of  chil- 
dren, assuredly  the  parents,  in  wearing  anxiety,  in  toil  and 
limitation  and  disappointment,  suffer  more.  And  in 
less  intense  and  dramatic,  but  perhaps  even  more 
melancholy  ways,  the  children  of  this  class  do  suffer. 
They  do  not  die  so  abundantly  in  infancy,  but  they  grow 
up,  too  many  of  them,  to  shabby  and  limited  lives.     In 


48  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

Britain  they  are  still,  as  a  class,  extraordinarily  ill- 
educated  —  many  of  them  still  go  to  incompetent,  under- 
staffed, and  ill-equipped  private  adventure  schools; 
they  are  sent  into  business  prematurely,  often  at  four- 
teen or  fifteen;  they  become  mechanical,  "respectable" 
drudges  in  processes  they  do  not  understand.  They  may 
escape  want  and  squalor  for  a  while  perhaps,  but  they 
cannot  escape  narrowness  and  limitation  and  a  cramped 
and  anxious  life.  If  they  get  to  anything  better  than 
that,  it  is  chiefly  through  almost  heroic  parental  effort 
and  sacrifice. 

The  plain  fact  is  that  the  better  middle- class  parents 
serve  the  state  in  this  matter  of  child-rearing,  the  less 
is  their  reward,  the  less  is  their  security,  the  greater 
their  toil  and  anxiety.  Is  it  any  wonder  then  that 
throughout  this  more  comfortable  but  more  refined 
and  exacting  class,  the  skilled  artisan  and  middle  class, 
there  goes  on  something  even  more  disastrous  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  state  than  the  squalor,  despair,  and 
neglect  of  the  lower  levels,  and  that  is  a  very  evident 
strike  against  parentage?  While  the  very  poor  con- 
tinue to  have  many  children  who  die  or  grow  up  under- 
sized, crippled,  or  half-civihzed,  the  middle  mass,  which 
can  contrive,  with  a  struggle  and  sacrifice,  to  rear  fairly 
well-grown  and  well-equipped  offspring,  which  has  a 
conscience   for   the   well-being  and   happiness   of    the 


FIRST  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM      49 

young,  manifests  a  diminishing  spirit  for  parentage,  its 
families  fall  to  four,  to  three,  to  two,  and  in  an  increas- 
ing number  of  instances  there  are  no  children  at  all. 

With  regard  to  the  struggling  middle-class  and  skilled- 
artisan-class  parent,  even  more  than  to  the  lower  poor, 
does  the  Socialist  insist  upon  the  plain  need,  if  only  that 
our  state  and  nation  should  continue,  of  endowment  and 
help.  He  deems  it  not  simply  unreasonable  but  ridicu- 
lous that  in  a  world  of  limitless  resources,  of  vast  ex- 
penditure, of  unparalleled  luxury,  in  which  two-million- 
pound  battleships  and  multi-millionaires  are  common 
objects,  the  supremely  important  business  of  rearing 
the  bulk  of  the  next  generation  of  the  middling  sort  of 
people  should  be  left  almost  entirely  to  the  unaided, 
unguided  efforts  of  impoverished  and  struggling  women 
and  men.  It  seems  to  him  almost  beyond  sanity  to 
suppose  that  so  things  must  or  can  continue. 

§4 

And  what  I  have  said  of  the  middle-class  parent  is 
true  with  certain  modifications  of  all  the  classes  above  it, 
except  that  in  a  monarchy  you  reach  at  last  one  state- 
subsidized  family,  —  in  the  case  of  Britain  a  very  healthy 
and  active  group,  the  royal  family,  which  is  not  only 
state-supported,  but  also,  beyond  the  requirements  of 
any  modern  Socialist,  state-bred.     There  are  enormous 


50  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

handicaps  at  every  other  social  level  upon  efficient  paren- 
tage, and  upon  the  training  of  children  for  any  public 
and  generous  end.  Parentage  is  treated  as  a  private 
foible,  and  those  who  undertake  its  solemn  responsi- 
bilities are  put  at  every  sort  of  disadvantage  against 
those  who  lead  sterile  lives,  who  give  all  their  strength 
and  resources  to  vanity  and  socially  harmful  personal 
indulgence.  These  latter,  with  an  ampler  leisure  and 
ampler  means,  determine  the  forms  of  pleasure  and 
social  usage,  they  "set  the  fashion"  and  bar  pride,  dis- 
tinction, or  relaxation  to  the  devoted  parent.  The  typi- 
cal British  aristocrat  is  not  parent-bred,  but  class-bred, 
—  a  person  with  a  lively  sense  of  social  influences  and 
no  social  ideas.  The  one  class  that  is  economically  cap- 
able of  making  all  that  can  be  made  of  its  children  is 
demoralized  by  the  very  irresponsibility  of  the  wealth 
that  creates  this  opportunity.  This  is  still  more  ap- 
parent in  the  American  plutocracy,  where  perhaps  half 
the  women  appear  to  be  artificially  sterilized  spenders 
of  money  upon  frivolous  ends. 

No  doubt  there  is  in  the  richer  strata  of  the  com- 
munity a  certain  proportion  of  families  with  a  real  tra- 
dition of  upbringing  and  service;  such  English  families 
as  the  Cecils,  Balfours,  and  Trevelyans,  for  example, 
produce,  generation  after  generation,  public-spirited  and 
highly  competent  men.     But  the  family  tradition  in 


FIRST  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM     51 

these  cases  is  an  excess  of  virtue  rather  than  any  necessary 
consequence  of  a  social  advantage;  it  is  a  defiance 
rather  than  a  necessity  of  our  economic  system.  It  is 
natural  that  such  men  as  Lord  Hugh  and  Lord  Robert 
Cecil,  highly  trained,  highly  capable,  but  without  that 
gift  of  sympathetic  imagination  which  releases  a  man 
from  the  subtle  mental  habituations  of  his  upbringing, 
should  idealize  every  family  in  the  world  to  the  likeness 
of  their  own  —  and  find  the  Socialist's  over-parent  of  the 
state,  not  simply  a  needless  but  a  mischievous  and 
wicked  innovation.  They  think,  they  will  I  fear  con- 
tinue to  think,  of  England  as  a  world  of  happy  Hatfields, 
cottage  Hatfields,  villa  Hatfields,  Hatfields  over  the  shop, 
and  Hatfields  behind  the  farmyard,  wickedly  and  wan- 
tonly assailed  and  interfered  with  by  a  band  of  weirdly 
discontented  men.  It  is  a  dream  that  the  reader  must 
not  share.  Even  in  the  case  of  the  rich  and  really  pros- 
perous it  is  an  illusion.  In  no  class  at  the  present  time 
is  there  a  real  inducement  to  the  effectual  rearing  of 
trained  and  educated  citizens;  in  every  class  are  diffi- 
culties and  discouragements. 

This  state  of  affairs,  says  the  Socialist,  is  chaotic  and 
socially  wasteful.  It  means  a  world-wide  failure  in 
health,  vigour,  order,  and  beauty.  Such  pleasure  as  it 
permits  is  a  gaudy  indulgence  filched  from  children  and 
duty;  such  beauty,  a  hectic  beauty  stained  with  in  jus- 


52  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

tice ;  such  happiness,  a  happiness  that  can  only  continue 
so  long  as  it  remains  blind  or  indifferent  to  a  sea  of 
wretchednesses  and  failure.  Our  present  system  of 
isolated  and  unsupported  families  keeps  the  mass  of  the 
world  beyond  all  necessity  painful,  ugly,  and  squalid.  It 
stands  condemned,  and  it  must  end. 

§5 

Let  me  summarize  what  has  been  said  in  this  chapter  in 
a  compact  proposition,  and  so  complete  the  statement  of 
the  First  Main  Generalization  of  Socialism. 

The  ideas  of  the  private  individual  rights  of  the  parent 
and  of  his  isolated  responsibility  for  his  children  are  harm- 
fully exaggerated  in  the  contemporary  world.  We  do  not 
sufficiently  protect  children  from  negligent,  incompetent, 
selfish,  or  wicked  parents,  and  we  do  not  sufficiently  aid  and 
encourage  good  parents ;  parentage  is  altogether  too  mux^h  a 
matter  of  private  adventure,  and  the  individual  family  is 
altogether  too  irresponsible.  As  a  consequence  there  is  a 
huge  amount  of  avoidable  privation,  suffering,  and  sorroiv, 
and  a  large  proportion  of  the  generation  tJiat  grows  up, 
grows  up  stunted,  limited,  badly  educated,  and  incompetent 
in  comparison  with  the  strength,  training,  and  beauty  with 
which  a  better  social  organization  could  endow  it. 

The  Socialist  holds  that  the  community  as  a  whole  should 
be  responsible,  and  every  individual  in  the  community, 


FIRST  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM      53 

married  or  single,  parent  or  childless,  should  he  responsible, 
for  the  welfare  and  upbringing  of  every  child  born  into  that 
community.  This  responsibility  may  be  delegated  in 
whole  or  in  part  to  parent,  teacher,  or  other  guardian  —  but 
it  is  not  simply  the  right  but  the  duty  of  the  state  —  that  is 
to  say,  of  the  organized  power  and  intelligence  of  the  com- 
munity —  to  direct,  to  inquire,  and  to  intervene  in  any 
default  for  the  child's  welfare. 

Parentage  rightly  undertaken  is  a  service  as  well  as  a 
duty  to  the  world,  carrying  with  it  not  only  obligations  but 
a  claim,  the  strongest  of  claims,  upon  the  whole  community. 
It  must  be  paid  for  like  any  other  public  service;  in  any 
completely  civilized  state  it  must  be  sustained,  rewarded, 
and  controlled.  And  this  is  to  be  done  not  to  supersede  the 
love,  pride,  and  conscience  of  the  parent,  but  to  supplement, 
encourage,  and  rnaintain  it. 

§6 

This  is  the  first  of  the  twin  generalizations  upon  which 
the  whole  edifice  of  modern  Socialism  rests.  Its  fellow- 
generalization  we  must  consider  in  the  chapter  imme- 
diately to  follow. 

But  at  this  point  the  reader  unaccustomed  to  social 
questions  will  experience  a  difficulty.  He  will  naturally 
think  of  this  much  of  change  we  ha.ve  broached,  as  if  it 
was  to  happen  in  a  world  that  otherwise  was  to  remain 


54  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

just  as  the  world  is  now,  with  merchants,  landowners, 
rich  and  poor,  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  You  are  proposing, 
he  may  say,  what  is  no  doubt  a  highly  desirable  but 
which  is  also  a  quite  impossible  thing.  You  propose 
practically  to  educate  all  the  young  of  the  country  and 
to  pay  at  least  sufficient  to  support  them  and  their 
mothers  in  decency — out  of  what?  Where  will  you  get 
the  money  ? 

That  is  a  perfectly  legitimate  question  and  one  that 
must  be  answered  fully  if  our  whole  project  is  not  to  fall 
to  the  ground. 

So  we  come  to  the  discussion  of  material  means,  of  the 
wherewithal, that  is  to  say, to  the  "  Economics"  of  Social- 
ism. The  reader  will  see  very  speedily  that  this  great 
social  revolution  we  propose  necessarily  involves  a  revo- 
lution in  business  and  industry  that  will  be  equally  far- 
reaching.  The  two  revolutions  are  indeed  inseparable, 
two  sides  of  one  wheel,  and  it  is  scarcely  possible  that 
one  could  happen  without  the  other. 

Of  course  the  community  supports  all  its  children  now; 
the  only  point  is  that  it  does  not  support  them  in  its 
collective  character  as  a  state  "as  a  whole."  All  the 
children  in  the  world  are  supported  by  all  the  people 
in  the  world,  but  very  unfairly  and  irregularly,  through 
the  intervention  of  that  great  multitude  of  small  pri- 
vate proprietors,  the  parents.    When  the  parents  fail. 


FIRST  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF   SOCIALISM      55 

Charity  and  the  Parish  step  in.  If  the  reader  will  refer 
to  those  ten  cases  from  Edinburgh  I  have  already  quoted 
in  Chapter  III,  §  1,  he  will  note  that  in  eight  out  of 
the  ten  there  comes  in  the  eleemosynary  element ;  in  the 
seventh  case  especially  he  will  get  an  inkling  of  its  waste. 
A  change  in  the  system  that  diminished  (though  it  by 
no  means  abolished)  this  separate  dependence  of  children 
upon  parents,  each  child  depending  upon  these  ''pieces" 
from  the  parental  feast,  need  not  necessarily  diminish 
the  amount  of  wheat,  or  leather,  or  milk  in  the  world ;  the 
children  would  still  get  the  bread  and  milk  and  boots, 
but  through  different  channels  and  in  a  different  spirit. 
They  might  even  get  more.  The  method  of  making  and 
distribution  will  evidently  have  to  be  a  different  one  and 
run  counter  to  currently  accepted  notions;  that  is  all. 
Not  only  is  it  true  that  a  change  of  system  need  not 
diminish  the  amount  of  food  in  the  world ;  it  might  even 
increase  it.  The  Socialist  declares  that  his  system  would 
increase  it.  He  proposes  a  method  of  making  and 
distribution,  a  change  in  industrial  conditions  and  in  the 
conventions  of  property,  that  he  declares  will  not  only 
not  diminish,  but  will  greatly  increase,  the  production  of 
the  world,  and  changes  in  the  administration  that  he  is 
equally  convinced  will  insure  a  far  juster  and  better  use  of 
all  that  is  produced. 

This  side  of  his  proposals  we  will  proceed  to  consider  in 
our  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   SECOND   MAIN   GENERALIZATION   OF   SOCIALISM 
§1 

We  have  considered  the  SociaHst  criticism  of  the  pres- 
ent state  of  affairs  in  relation  to  the  most  important  of  all 
public  questions,  the  question  of  the  welfare  and  up- 
bringing of  the  next  generation.  We  have  stated  the 
general  principle  of  social  reconstruction  that  emerges 
from  that  criticism.  We  have  now  to  enter  upon  the 
question  of  ways  and  means,  the  economic  question. 
We  have  to  ask  whether  the  vision  we  have  conjured  up 
of  a  whole  population  well-fed,  well-clad,  well-educated 
—  in  a  word  well-brought  up  —  is,  after  all,  only  an 
amiable  dream.  Is  it  true  that  humanity  is  producing 
all  that  it  can  produce  at  the  present  time,  and  managing 
everything  about  as  well  as  it  can  be  managed ;  that,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  there  isn't  enough  of  food  and  care  to 
go  round,  and  hence  the  unavoidable  anxiety  in  the  life 
of  every  one  (except  in  the  case  of  a  small  minority  of 
exceptionally  secure  people)  and  the  absolute  wretched- 
ness of  vast  myriads  of  the  poorer  sort  ? 

56 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM      57 

The  Socialist  says,  No  !  He  asserts  that  our  economic 
system  is  as  chaotic  and  wasteful  as  our  system  of  rear- 
ing children  —  is  only  another  aspect  of  the  same  plan- 
lessness  —  that  it  does  its  work  with  a  needless  excess 
of  friction,  that  it  might  be  far  simpler  and  almost  in- 
finitely more  productive  than  it  is. 

Let  us  detach  ourselves  a  little  from  our  everyday 
habits  of  thinking  in  these  matters ;  let  us  cease  to  take 
customary  things  for  granted,  and  let  us  try  to  con- 
sider how  our  economic  arrangements  would  strike  a 
disinterested  intelligence  that  looked  at  them  freshly  for 
the  first  time.  Let  us  take  some  matter  of  primary 
economic  importance,  such  as  the  housing  of  the  popula- 
tion, and  do  our  best  to  criticise  it  in  this  spirit  of  per- 
sonal aloofness.  In  order  to  do  that,  let  us  try  to  de- 
tach ourselves  a  little  from  our  own  personal  interest  in 
these  affairs.  Imagine  a  mind  ignorant  of  our  history  and 
traditions,  coming  from  some  other  sphere,  from  some 
world  more  civilized,  from  some  other  planet  perhaps,  to 
this  earth.  Would  our  system  of  housing  strike  it  as  the 
very  wisest  and  most  practical  possible,  would  it  really 
seem  to  be  the  attainable  maximum  of  outcome  for 
human  exertion,  or  would  it  seem  confused,  disorderly, 
wasteful,  and  bad  ?  The  Socialist  holds  that  the  latter 
would  certainly  be  the  verdict  of  such  an  impartial 
examination. 


58  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

What  would  our  visitor  find  in  such  a  country  as 
England,  for  example  ?  He  would  find  a  few  thousand 
people  housed  with  conspicuous  comfort  and  sumptu- 
ousness,  in  large,  airy,  and  often  extremely  beautiful 
homes  equipped  with  every  convenience  —  except  such 
as  economize  labour — and  waited  on  by  many  thousands 
of  attendants.  He  would  find  next,  several  hundreds  of 
thousands  in  houses  reasonably  well  built,  but  for  the 
most  part  ill-designed  and  unpleasant  to  the  eye,  houses 
passably  sanitary  and  convenient,  fitted  with  bath- 
rooms, with  properly  equipped  kitchens,  usually  with 
a  certain  space  of  air  and  garden  about  them.  And  the 
rest  of  our  millions  he  would  find  crowded  into  houses 
evidently  too  small  for  a  decent  life,  and  often  dreadfully 
dirty  and  insanitary,  without  proper  space  or  appliances 
to  cook  properly,  wash  properly,  or,  indeed,  perform  any 
of  the  fundamental  operations  of  a  civilized  life  toler- 
ably well,  —  without,  indeed,  even  the  privacy  needed  for 
common  decency.  In  the  towns  he  would  find  most  of 
the  houses  occupied  by  people  for  whose  needs  they  were 
obviously  not  designed,  and  in  many  cases  extraordi- 
narily crowded,  ramshackle,  and  unclean;  in  the 
country  he  would  be  amazed  to  find  still  denser  con- 
gestion, sometimes  a  dozen  people  in  one  miserable, 
tumbledown,  outwardly  picturesque  and  inwardly  abom- 
inable two-roomed  cottage,  —  people  living  up  against 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM     59 

pigstyes  and  drawing  water  from  wells  they  could  not 
help  but  contaminate.  Think  of  how  the  intimate 
glimpses  from  the  railway  train  one  gets  into  people's 
homes  upon  the  outskirts  of  any  of  our  large  towns  would 
impress  him.  And  being,  as  we  assume,  clear  minded  and 
able  to  trace  cause  and  effect,  he  would  &ce  all  this  dis- 
order working  out  in  mortality,  disease,  misery,  and  in- 
tellectual and  moral  failure. 

All  this  would  strike  our  visitor  as  a  very  remarkable 
state  of  affairs  for  reasonable  creatures  to  endure,  and 
probably  he  would  not  understand  at  first  that  millions 
of  people  were  content  to  regard  all  this  disorder  as  the 
permanent  lot  of  humanity.  He  would  assume  that 
this  must  be  a  temporary  state  of  affairs  due  to  some 
causes  unknown  to  him,  some  great  migration,  for  exam- 
ple. He  would  suppose  we  were  all  busy  putting  things 
right.  He  would  see  on  the  one  hand  unemployed 
labour  and  unemployed  material;  on  the  other,  great 
areas  of  suitable  land  and  the  crying  need  for  more  and 
better  homes  than  the  people  had,  and  it  would  seem 
the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world  that  the  directing 
intelligence  of  the  community  should  set  the  unemployed 
people  to  work  with  the  unemployed  material  upon  the 
land  to  house  the  whole  population  fairly  and  well. 
There  exist  all  that  is  needed  to  house  the  whole  popula- 
tion admirably :  the  building  material,  the  room,  the  un- 
occupied hands.    Why  is  it  not  being  done? 


60  NEW  WORLDS  FOR   OLD 

Our  answer  would  be,  of  course,  that  he  did  not  un- 
derstand our  difficulties ;  the  land  was  not  ours  to  do  as 
we  liked  with, —  it  did  not  belong  to  the  community  but  to 
certain  persons,  the  Owners,  who  either  refused  to  let  us 
build  upon  it  or  buy  it  or  have  anything  to  do  with  it,  or 
demanded  nif^iey  we  could  not  produce  for  it;  that 
equally  the  material  was  not  ours,  but  belonged  to  cer- 
tain other  Owners,  and  that,  thirdly,  the  community  had 
insufficient  money  or  credit  to  pay  the  wages  and  main- 
tenance and  equipment  of  the  workers  who  starved  and 
degenerated  in  our  streets  —  for  that  money  too  was 
privately  owned. 

This  would  puzzle  our  visitor  considerably.  "  Why  do 
you  have  Owners?"  he  would  ask. 

We  might  find  that  difficult  to  answer. 

"But  why  do  you  let  the  land  be  owned?"  he  would 
go  on.  "You  don't  let  people  own  the  air.  And  these 
bricks  and  timber  you  mustn't  touch,  the  mortar  you 
need  and  the  gold  you  need,  they  all  came  out  of  the 
ground  —  they  all  belonged  to  everybody  or  nobody  a 
little  while  ago !" 

You  would  say  something  indistinct  about  Property. 

"But  why?" 

"Somebody  must  own  the  things." 

"Well,  let  the  state  own  the  things  and  use  them  for 
the  common  good.     It  owns  the  roads,  it  owns  the  fore- 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM      61 

shores,  and  the  territorial  seas — nobody  owns  the 
air!" 

If  you  entered  upon  historical  explanations  with  him, 
you  would  soon  be  in  difficulties.  You  would  find  that 
so  recently  as  the  Feudal  System — which  was  still  living, 
so  to  speak,  yesterday  —  the  King,  who  stood  for  the 
State,  held  the  land  as  the  Realm,  and  the  predecessors 
of  the  present  owners  held  under  him  merely  as  the 
administrative  officials  who  performed  all  sorts  of  public 
services  and  had  all  sorts  of  privileges  thereby.  They 
have  dropped  the  services  and  stuck  to  the  land  and  the 
privileges;  that  is  all. 

"I  begin  to  perceive,"  our  visitor  would  say  as  this 
became  clear;  ''your  world  is  under  the  spell  of  an 
exaggerated  idea,  this  preposterous  idea  there  must  be 
an  individual  Owner  for  everything  in  the  world.  Ob- 
viously you  can't  get  on  while  you  are  under  the  spell  of 
that !  So  long  as  you  have  this  private  Ownership  in 
everything,  there's  no  help  for  you.  You  cut  up  your 
land  and  material  in  parcels  of  all  sorts  and  sizes  among 
this  multitude  of  irresponsible  little  monarchs;  you  let 
all  the  material  you  need  get  distributed  among  another 
small  swarm  of  owners,  and  clearly  you  can  only  get 
them  to  work  for  public  ends  in  the  most  roundabout,  te- 
dious, and  wasteful  way.  Why  should  they?  They're 
very  well  satisfied  as  they  are !    But  if  the  community 


62  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

as  a  whole  insisted  that  this  idea  of  private  ownership 
you  have  in  regard  to  land  and  natural  things  was  all 
nonsense  —  and  it  is  all  nonsense  !  —  just  think  what 
you  might  not  do  with  it  now  that  you  have  all  the  new 
powers  and  lights  that  science  has  given  you.  You 
might  turn  all  your  towns  into  garden  cities,  put  an  end 
to  overcrowding,  abolish  smoky  skies." 

"Hush !"  I  should  have  to  interrupt;  "if  you  talk  of 
the  things  that  are  clearly  possible  in  the  world  to-day, 
they  will  say  you  are  an  Utopian  dreamer !" 

But  at  least  one  thing  would  have  become  clear,  the 
little  swarm  of  Owners  and  their  claim  standing  in  the 
way  of  any  bold  collective  dealing  with  housing  or  any 
such  public  concern.  .  The  real  work  to  be  done  here  is 
to  change  an  idea,  that  idea  of  ownership,  to  so  modify 
it  that  it  will  cease  to  obstruct  the  rational  development 
of  hfe,  —  and  that  is  what  the  Socialist  seeks  to  do. 

§2 
Now  the  argument  that  the  civilized  housing  of  the 
masses  of  our  population  now  is  impossible  because  if 
you  set  out  to  do  it,  you  come  against  the  veto  of  the 
private  ownier  at  every  stage,  can  be  applied  to  almost 
every  general  public  service.  Some  little  while  ago  I 
wrote  a  tract  for  the  Fabian  Society  about  boots  ^ ; 

*  This  Misery  of  Boots.  It  is  intended  as  an  introductory- 
tract  explaining  the  central  idea  of  Socialism  for  propaganda  pur- 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM      63 

and  I  will  not  apologize  for  repeating  here  a  passage 
from  that.  To  begin  with,  this  tract  pointed  out  the 
badness,  unhealthfulness,  and  discomfort  of  people's 
footwear  as  one  saw  it  in  every  poor  quarter,  and  asked 
why  it  was  things  were  in  so  disagreeable  a  state.  There 
was  plenty  of  leather  in  the  world,  plenty  of  labour. 

"  Here  on  the  one  hand  —  you  can  see  for  yourself  in  any  un- 
fashionable part  of  Great  Britain  —  are  people  badly,  uncom- 
fortably, painfully  shod,  in  old  boots,  rotten  boots,  sham  boots; 
and  on  the  other  great  stretches  of  land  in  the  world,  with  un- 
limited possibilities  of  cattle  and  leather  and  great  numbers  of 
people  who,  either  through  wealth  or  trade  disorder,  are  doing 
no  work.  And  our  question  is,  'Why  cannot  the  latter  set  to 
work  and  make  and  distribute  boots?' 

"Imagine  yourself  trying  to  organize  something  of  this  kind 
of  Free  Booting  expedition;  and  consider  the  difficulties  you 
would  meet  with.  You  would  begin  by  looking  for  a  lot  of 
leather.  Imagine  yourself  setting  off  to  South  America,  for 
example,  to  get  leather;  beginning  at  the  very  beginning  by 
setting  to  work  to  kill  and  flay  a  herd  of  cattle.  You  find  at 
once  you  are  interrupted.  Along  comes  your  first  obstacle  in 
the  shape  of  a  man  who  tells  you  the  cattle  and  the  leather  belong 
to  him.  You  explain  that  the  leather  is  wanted  for  people  who 
have  no  decent  boots  in  England.  He  says  he  does  not  care  a 
rap  what  you  want  it  for,  before  you  may  take  it  from  him  you 
have  to  buy  him  off;  it  is  his  private  property,  this  leather,  and 

poses,  and  it  is  published  by  the  Fabian  Society  of  3  Clements  Inn, 
London,  W.C.,  at  3d.  That  together  with  my  tract  Socialism  and 
the  Family  (A.  C.  Fifield,  44  Fleet  Street,  E.C.  6d.),  gives  the 
whole  broad  outline  of  the  Socialist  attitude  pretty  completely. 


64  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

the  herd  and  the  land  over  which  the  herd  ranges.  You  ask  him 
how  much  he  wants  for  his  leather,  and  he  tells  you  frankly 
just  as  much  as  he  can  induce  you  to  give. 

"If  he  chanced  to  be  a  person  of  exceptional  sweetness  of  dis- 
position, you  might  perhaps  argue  with  him.  You  might  point 
out  to  him  that  this  project  of  giving  people  splendid  boots  was 
a  fine  one  that  would  put  an  end  to  much  human  misery.  He 
might  even  sympathize  with  your  generous  enthusiasm  ;  but  you 
would,  I  think,  find  him  adamantine  in  his  resolve  to  get  just 
as  much  out  of  you  for  his  leather  as  you  could  with  the  utmost 
effort  pay. 

"  Suppose  now  you  said  to  him, '  But  how  did  you  come  by  this 
land  and  these  herds,  so  that  you  can  stand  between  them  and  the 
people  who  have  need  of  them,  exacting  this  i)rofit  ?'  He  would 
probably  either  embark  upon  a  long  rigmarole  or,  what  is  much 
more  probable,  lose  his  temper  and  decline  to  argue.  Pursuing 
your  doubt  as  to  the  rightfulness  of  his  property  in  these  things, 
you  might  admit  he  deserved  a  certain  reasonable  fee  for  the 
rough  care  he  had  taken  of  the  land  and  herds.  But  cattle 
breeders  are  a  rude,  violent  race,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  you  would 
get  far  beyond  your  proposition  of  a  reasonable  fee.  You  would 
in  fact  have  to  buy  off  this  owner  of  the  leather  at  a  good  thump- 
ing price  —  he  exacting  just  as  much  as  he  could  get  from  you  — 
if  you  wanted  to  go  on  with  your  project. 

"Well,  then  you  would  have  to  get  your  leather  here;  and  to 
do  that,  you  would  have  to  bring  it  by  railway  and  ship  to  this 
country.  And  here  again  you  would  find  people  without  any 
desire  or  intention  of  helping  your  project,  standing  in  your 
course  resolved  to  make  every  possible  penny  out  of  you  on  your 
way  to  provide  sound  boots  for  every  one.  You  would  find  the 
railway  was  private  property  and  had  owner  or  owners;  you 
would  find  the  ship  was  private  property,  with  an  owner  or 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM     65 

owners ;  and  that  none  of  these  would  be  satisfied  for  a  moment 
with  a  mere  fee  adequate  to  their  services.  They  too  would  be 
resolved  to  make  every  penny  of  profit  out  of  you.  If  you  made 
inquiries  about  the  matter,  you  would  probably  find  the  real 
owners  of  railway  and  ship  were  companies  of  shareholders,  and 
that  the  profit  squeezed  out  of  your  poor  people's  boots  at  this 
stage  went  to  fill  the  pockets  of  old  ladies  at  Torquay,  spend- 
thrifts in  Paris,  well-booted  gentlemen  in  London  clubs,  all  sorts 
of  glossy  people.  .  .  , 

"Well,  you  get  the  leather  to  England  at  last,  and  now  you 
want  to  make  it  into  boots.  You  take  it  to  a  centre  of  popula- 
tion, invite  workers  to  come  to  you,  erect  sheds  and  machinery 
upon  a  vacant  piece  of  ground,  and  start  off  in  a  sort  of  fury  of 
generous  industry,  boot-making.  .  .  .  Do  you?  There  comes 
along  an  owner  for  that  vacant  piece  of  ground,  declares  it  is  his 
property,  demands  an  enormous  sum  for  rent.  And  your  work- 
ers all  round  you,  you  find,  cannot  get  house  room  until  they  too 
have  paid  rent  —  every  inch  of  the  country  is  somebody's  prop- 
erty, and  a  man  may  not  shut  his  eyes  for  an  hour  without  the 
consent  of  some  owner  or  other.  And  the  food  your  shoe- 
makers eat,  the  clothes  they  wear,  have  all  paid  tribute  and 
profit  to  landowners,  cart  owners,  house  owners,  —  endless  tribute 
over  and  above  the  fair  pay  for  work  that  has  been  done  upon 
them.  .  .  . 

"So  one  might  go  on.  But  you  begin  to  see  now  one  set  of 
reasons  at  least  why  every  one  has  not  good  comfortable  boots. 
There  could  be  plenty  of  leather ;  and  there  is  certainly  plenty 
of  labour  and  quite  enough  intelligence  in  the  world  to  manage 
that  and  a  thousand  other  desirable  things.  But  this  institu- 
tion of  Private  Property  in  land  and  naturally  produced  things, 
these  obstructive  claims  that  prevent  you  using  ground  or 
moving  material  and  that  have  to  be  bought  out  at  exorbitant 


66  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

prices,  stand  in  the  way.  All  these  owners  hang  like  parasites 
upon  your  enterprise  at  its  every  stage;  and  by  the  time  you 
get  your  sound  boots  well  made  in  England,  you  will  find  them 
costing  about  a  pound  a  pair,  high  out  of  the  reach  of  the  general 
mass  of  people.  And  you  will  perhaps  not  think  me  fanciful 
and  extravagant  when  I  confess  that  when  I  realize  this  and 
look  at  poor  people's  boots  in  the  street,  and  see  them  cracked 
and  misshapen  and  altogether  nasty,  I  seem  to  see  also  a  lot  of 
little  phantom  landowners,  cattle  owners,  house  owners,  owners 
of  all  sorts,  swarming  over  their  pinched  and  weary  feet  like 
leeches,  taking  much  and  giving  nothing  and  being  the  real  cause 
of  all  such  miseries." 

§3 

Our  visitor  would  not  only  be  struck  by  the  obstruc- 
tion of  our  social  activities  through  our  system  of 
leaving  everything  to  private  enterprise;  he  would  also 
be  struck  by  the  immense  wastefulness.  Everywhere 
he  would  see  things  in  duplicate  and  triplicate;  down 
the  High  Street  of  any  small  town  he  would  find 
three  or  four  butchers  —  all  selling  New  Zealand 
mutton  and  Argentine  beef  as  English;  five  or  six 
grocers,  three  or  four  milk  shops,  one  or  two  big 
drapers,  and  three  or  four  small  haberdashers,  milli- 
ners, and  "  fancy  shops,"  two  or  three  fishmongers,  all 
very  poor,  all  rather  bad,  most  of  them  in  debt  and 
with  their  assistants  all  insecure  and  underpaid.  He 
would  find  in  spite  of  this  wealth  of  competition  that 
every  one  who  could  contrive   it,  all  the  really  pros- 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM     67 

perous  people  in  fact,  bought  most  of  their  food  and 
drapery  from  big  London  firms. 

But  why  should  I  go  on  writing  fresh  arguments  when 
we  have  Elihu's  classic  tract  ^  to  quote  ? 

"Observe  how  private  enterprise  supplies  the  street  with 
milk.  At  7.30  a  milk  cart  comes  lumbering  along  and  delivers 
milk  at  one  house  and  away  again.  Half  an  hour  later  another 
milk  cart  arrives  and  delivers  milk  first  on  this  side  the  street 
and  then  on  that,  until  seven  houses  have  been  supplied,  and 
then  he  departs.  During  the  next  three  hours  four  other  milk 
carts  put  in  an  appearance  at  varying  intervals,  supplying  a 
house  here  and  another  there,  until  finally,  as  it  draws  toward 
noon,  their  task  is  accomplished  and  the  street  supplied  with 
milk. 

"The  time  actually  occupied  by  one  and  another  of  these 
distributors  of  milk  makes  in  all  about  an  hour  and  forty  min- 
utes, six  men  and  six  horses  and  carts  being  required  for  the 
purpose,  and  these  equipages  rattle  along,  one  after  the  other,  all 
over  the  district,  through  the  greater  part  of  the  day  in  the  same 
erratic  and  extraordinary  manner." 

§  4 

Our  imaginary  visitor  would  probably  quite  fail  to 

grasp  the  reasons  why  we  do  not  forthwith  shake  off 

this  obstructive  and  harmful  idea  of  Private  Ownership, 

dispossess  our  landowners,  and  so  forth,  as  gently  as 

'  Elihu's  tracts  are  published  by  the  I.L.P.,  23  Bride  Lane, 
Fleet  Street,  London,  E.G.,  at  one  penny  each.  The  best  are: 
Whose  Dog  art  Thou?  A  Nation  of  Slaves;  Milk  and  Postage 
Stamps;   A  Corner  in  Flesh  and  Blood;  and  Simple  Division. 


68  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

possible,  and  set  to  work  upon  collective  housing  and  the 
rest  of  it.     And  so  he  would  "exit  wondering." 

But  that  would  be  only  the  opening  of  the  real  argu- 
ment. A  competent  anti-Socialist  of  a  more  terrestrial 
experience  would  have  a  great  many  very  effectual  and 
very  sound  considerations  to  advance  in  defence  of  the 
present  system. 

He  might  urge  that  our  present  way  of  doing  things, 
though  it  was  sometimes  almost  as  wasteful  as  Nature 
when  fresh  spawn  or  pollen  germs  are  scattered,  was  in 
many  ways  singularly  congenial  to  the  infirmities  of 
humanity.  The  idea  of  property  is  a  spontaneous  prod- 
uct of  the  mortal  mind ;  children  develop  it  in  the  nur- 
sery, and  are  passionately  alive  to  the  difference  of 
meum  and  tuum,  and  its  extension  to  land,  subterranean 
products,  and  wild  free  things,  even  if  it  is  under  analysis 
a  little  unreasonable,  was  at  least  singularly  acceptable 
to  humanity. 

And  there  would  be  admirable  soundness  in  all  this. 
There  can  be  little  or  no  doubt  that  the  conception  of 
personal  ownership  has  in  the  past  contributed  elements 
to  human  progress  that  could  have  come  through  no  other 
means.  It  has  allowed  private  individuals  in  odd  corners 
to  try  experiments  in  new  methods  and  new  appliances, 
that  the  general  intelligence,  such  as  it  was,  of  the  com- 
munity could  not  have  understood.    For  all  its  faults  our 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION   OF   SOCIALISM     69 

present  individualistic  order,  compared  not  simply  with 
the  communism  of  primitive  tribes,  but  even  with  the 
personal  and  largely  illiterate  control  of  the  mediseval 
feudal  governments,  is  a  good  efficient  working  method. 
I  don't  think  a  Socialist  need  quarrel  with  the  facts  of 
history  or  human  nature.  But  he  would  urge  that 
Private  Ownership  is  only  a  phase,  though  no  doubt 
quite  a  necessary  phase,  in  human  development.  The 
world  has  needed  Private  Ownership  just  as  (Lester  F. 
Ward  declares  ^)  it  once  needed  slavery  to  discipline 
men  and  women  to  agriculture  and  habits  of  industry, 
and  just  as  it  needed  autocratic  kings  to  weld  warring 
tribes  into  nations  and  nations  into  empires,  to  build 
high-roads,  end  private  war,  and  establish  the  idea  of 
law,  and  a  wider  than  tribal  loyalty.  But  just  as  West- 
ern Europe  has  passed  out  of  the  phases  of  slavery  and 
of  autocracy  (which  is  national  slavery)  into  constitu- 
tionalism, so,  he  would  hold,  we  are  passing  out  of  the 
phase  of  private  ownership  of  land  and  material  and 
food.  We  are  doing  so  not  because  we  reject  it,  but 
because  we  have  worked  it  out,  because  we  have  learnt 
its  lessons  and  can  now  go  on  to  a  higher  and  finer 
organization. 
There  the  anti-Socialist  would  join  issue  with  a  lesser 

'  Pure  Sociology,  pp.  271-272,  by  Lester  F.  Ward.     (The  Mac- 
millan  Company,  New  York.) 


70  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

advantage.  He  would  have  to  show  not  only  that  Pri- 
vate Ownership  has  been  serviceable  and  justifiable  in 
the  past, —  which  manySociahsts  admit  quite  cheerfully, 
—  but  that  it  is  the  crown  and  perfection  of  human 
method,  which  the  Socialists  flatly  deny.  Universal 
Private  Ownership,  an  extreme  development  of  the  sen- 
timent of  individual  autonomy  and  of  the  limitation  of 
the  state  to  the  merest  police  functions,  were  a  necessary 
outcome  of  the  breakdown  of  the  unprogressive  authori- 
tative Feudal  System  in  alliance  with  a  dogmatic  church. 
It  reached  its  maximum  in  the  eighteenth  century,  when 
even  some  of  the  prisons  and  workhouses  were  run  by 
private  contract,  when  people  issued  a  private  money, 
the  old  token  coinage,  and  even  regiments  of  soldiers  were 
raised  by  private  enterprise.  It  was,  the  Socialist  al- 
leges, a  mere  phase  of  that  breaking-up  of  the  old  social 
edifice,  a  wrecking  of  the  old  circle  of  ideas  that  had  to 
precede  the  new  constructive  effort.  But  with  land, 
with  all  sorts  of  property  and  all  sorts  of  businesses  and 
public  services,  just  as  with  the  old  isolated  private  family, 
the  old  separateness  and  independence  is  giving  way  to 
a  new  synthesis.  The  idea  of  Private  Ownership,  albeit 
still  the  ruling  idea  of  our  civilization,  does  not  rule 
nearly  so  absolutely  as  it  did.  It  weakens  and  falters 
before  the  inexorable  demands  of  social  necessity, 
manifestly  under  our  eyes. 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM      71 

The  Socialist  would  be  able  to  appeal  to  a  far  greater 
number  of  laws  in  the  nature  of  limitation  of  the  owner 
of  property  than  could  be  quoted  to  show  the  limitation 
of  the  old  supremacy  of  the  head  of  the  family.  In  the 
first  place  he  would  be  able  to  point  to  a  constantly  in- 
creasing interference  with  the  right  of  the  landowner 
to  do  what  he  liked  with  his  own,  building  regulations, 
intervention  to  create  allotments,  and  so  forth.  Then 
there  would  be  a  vast  mass  of  factory  and  industrial 
legislation,  controlling,  directing,  prohibiting,  fencing 
machinery,  interfering  on  behalf  of  health,  justice,  and 
public  necessity  with  the  owner's  free  bargain  with  his 
work  people.  His  business  undertakings  would  be 
under  limitations  his  grandfather  never  knew,  even 
harmless  adulterations  that  merely  intensify  profit  for- 
bidden him ! 

And  in  the  next  place  and  still  more  significant  is  the 
manifest  determination  to  keep  in  public  hands  many 
things  that  would  once  inevitably  have  become  private 
property.  For  example,  in  the  middle  Victorian  period, 
a  water-supply,  a  gas-supply,  a  railway  or  tramway  was 
inevitably  a  private  enterprise,  the  creation  of  a  new 
property;  now,  this  is  the  exception  rather  than  the 
rule.  While  gas  and  water  and  trains  were  supplied 
by  speculative  owners  for  profit,  electric  light  and 
power,  new  tramways  and  light  railways  are  created  in 


72  NEW   WORLDS  FOR   OLD 

an  increasing  number  of  cases  by  public  bodies  who 
retain  them  for  the  pubHc  good.  Nobody  who  travels 
to  London  as  I  do  regularly  in  the  dirty,  overcrowded 
carriages  of  the  infrequent  and  unpunctual  trains  of  the 
South  Eastern  Company  and  who  then  transfers  to  the 
cleanly,  speedy,  frequent,  in  a  word,  ''civilized"  electric 
cars  of  the  London  County  Council,  can  fail  to  estimate 
the  value  and  significance  of  this  supersession  of  the 
private  owner  by  the  commonweal. 

All  these  things,  the  Socialists  insist,  are  but  a  begin- 
ning. They  point  to  a  new  phase  in  social  development, 
to  the  appearance  of  a  collective  intelligence  and  a  sense 
of  public  service  taking  over  appliances,  powers,  enter- 
prises, with  a  growing  confidence  that  must  end  finally 
in  the  substitution  of  collective  for  private  ownership 
and  enterprise  throughout  the  whole  area  of  the  com- 
mon business  of  life. 

§5 

In  relation  to  quite  a  number  of  large  public  services 
it  can  be  shown  that  even  under  contemporary  condi- 
tions Private  Ownership  does  work  with  an  enormous 
waste  and  inefficiency.  Necessarily  it  seeks  for  profit; 
necessarily  it  seeks  to  do  as  little  as  possible  for  as 
much  as  possible.  The  prosperity  of  all  Kent  is  crippled 
by  a  "combine"  of  two  ill-managed  and  unenterprising 
railway  companies,  with  no  funds  for  new  developments, 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM     73 

grinding  out  an  uncertain  dividend  by  clipping  ex- 
penditure. 

I  happen  to  see  this  organization  pretty  closely,  and  I 
can  imagine  no  state  enterprise  west  of  Turkey  or 
Persia  presenting  even  to  the  passing  eye  so  deplorable 
a  spectacle  of  ruin  and  inefficiency.  The  South  Eastern 
Company's  estate  at  Seabrook  presents  the  dreariest 
spectacle  of  incompetent  development  conceivable;  one 
can  see  its  failure  three  miles  away ;  it  is  a  waste  with  an 
embryo  slum  in  one  corner  protected  by  an  extravagant 
sea-wall,  already  partly  shattered,  from  the  sea. 

To-day  (January  15,  1907)  the  price  of  the  ordinary 
South  Eastern  stock  is  86  and  its  deferred  stock  48;  of 
the  London,  Chatham,  and  Dover  ordinary  stock  15^; 
an  eloquent  testimony  to  the  disheartened  state  of  the 
owners  who  now  cling  reluctantly  to  this  disappointing 
monopoly.  Spite  of  this  impoverishment  of  the  ordi- 
nary shareholder,  this  railway  system  has  evidently 
paid  too  much  profit  in  the  past  for  efficiency ;  the  rolling- 
stock  is  old  and  aging,  much  of  it  is  by  modern  stand- 
ards abominable;  the  trains  are  infrequent  and  the 
shunting  operations  at  local  stations,  with  insufficient 
sidings  and  insufficient  staffs,  produce  a  chronic  dis- 
location and  unpunctuality  in  the  traffic  that  is  exag- 
gerated by  the  defects  of  direction  evident  even  in  the 
very  time-tables.    The  trains  are  not  well  planned,  the 


74  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

connections  with  branch  lines  are  often  extremely  ill- 
managed.  The  service  is  bad  to  its  details.  It  is  the 
exception  rather  than  the  rule  to  find  a  ticket-office  in  the 
morning  with  change  for  a  five-pound  note,  and,  as  a 
little  indication  of  the  spirit  of  the  whole  machine,  I 
discovered  the  other  day  that  the  conductors  upon  the 
South  Eastern  trams  at  Hythe  start  their  morning  with 
absolutely  no  change  at  all.  Recently  the  roof  of  the 
station  at  Charing  Cross  fell  in  through  sheer  decay.  A 
whole  rich  county  now  stagnates  hopelessly  under  the 
grip  of  this  sample  of  private  enterprise;  towns  fail  to 
grow,  trade  flows  sluggishly  from  point  to  point.  No 
population  in  the  world  would  stand  such  a  manage- 
ment as  it  endures  at  the  hands  of  the  South  Eastern 
Railway,  from  any  responsible  public  body.  Out 
would  go  the  whole  board  of  managers  at  the  next 
election.  Consider  what  would  have  happened  if  the 
London  County  Council  had  owned  Charing  Cross 
station  two  years  ago.  But  manifestly  there  is  nothing 
better  to  be  done  under  private  ownership  conditions. 
The  common  shareholders  are  scattered  and  practi- 
cally powerless,  and  their  collective  aim  is,  at  any  ex- 
pense to  the  public  welfare,  to  keep  the  price  of  the 
shares  from  going  still  lower. 

The   South   Eastern   Railway    is   only   one   striking 
instance   of  the  general   unserviceableness  of   private 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM      75 

ownership  for  public  services.  Nearly  all  the  British 
railway  companies,  in  greater  or  less  degree,  present 
now  a  similar  degenerative  process.  Years  of  profit- 
sweating,  of  high  dividends,  have  left  them  with  old 
stations,  old  rolling-stock,  old  staffs,  bad  habits,  and 
diminishing  borrowing  power.  Only  a  few  of  these  cor- 
porations make  any  attempt  to  keep  pace  with  inven- 
tion. It  is  remarkable  now  in  an  epoch  of  almost 
universal  progress  how  stagnant  the  British  privately 
owned  railways  are.  One  travels  nowadays  if  anything 
with  a  decrease  of  comfort  from  the  1880  accommodation, 
because  of  the  greater  overcrowding;  and  there  has 
been  no  general  increase  of  speed,  no  increase  in  smooth 
running,  no  increase  in  immunity  from  accident  now 
for  quite  a  number  of  years.  One  travels  in  a  dingy 
box  of  a  compartment  that  is  too  ill-lit  at  night  for 
reading  and  full  of  invincible  draughts.  In  winter  the 
only  warmth  is  too  often  an  insufficient  footwarmer  of 
battered  tin  for  which  the  passengers  fight  fiercely  with 
their  feet.  An  observant  person  cannot  fail  to  be 
struck  by  the  shabby-looking  porters  on  so  many  of 
our  lines  —  they  represent  the  standard  of  good  clothing 
for  the  year  1848  or  thereabouts  —  and  by  the  bleak 
misery  of  many  of  the  stations,  the  universal  dirt  that 
electricity  might  even  now  abolish.  You  dare  not  drop 
a  parcel  on  any  British  railway  cushion  for  fear  of  the 


76  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

cloud  of  horrible  dust  you  would  raise ;  you  have  to  put 
it  down  softly.  Consider,  too,  the  congested  infrequent 
suburban  trains  that  ply  round  any  large  centre  of  popu- 
lation, the  inefficient  goods  and  parcel  distribution  that 
hangs  up  the  trade  of  the  local  shopman  everywhere. 
Not  only  in  the  arrested  standard  of  comfort,  but  in  the 
efficiency  of  working  also,  are  our  privately  owned  rail- 
ways a  hopeless  discredit  to  private  owTiership. 

None  of  them,  hampered  by  their  present  equipment, 
are  able  to  adapt  themselves  readily  to  the  new  and 
better  mechanism  science  produces  for  them,  electric 
traction,  electric  lighting,  and  so  forth ;  and  it  seems  to 
me  highly  probable  that  the  last  steam  engines  and  the 
last  oil  lamps  in  the  world  will  be  found  upon  the 
southern  railway  lines  of  Great  Britain.  How  can  they 
go  on  borrowing  money  with  their  stock  at  the  prices  I 
have  quoted,  and  how  can  they  do  anything  without 
money?  The  conception  of  profit-raising  that  rules 
our  railways  takes  rather  an  altogether  different  direc- 
tion ;  it  takes  the  form  of  attempts  to  procure  a  monopoly 
even  of  the  minor  traffic  by  resisting  the  development 
of  light  railways,  and  of  keeping  the  standard  of  comfort, 
decency,  and  cleanliness  low.  As  for  the  vast  social 
ameliorations  that  could  be  wrought  now  and  are 
urgently  needed  now,  by  redistributing  population 
through  enhanced  and  cheapened  services  scientifically 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM      77 

planned,  and  by  an  efficient  collection  and  carriage  of 
horticultural  and  agricultural  produce,  these  things  lie 
outside  the  philosophy  of  the  private  owner  altogether. 
They  would  probably  not  pay  him,  and  there  the  matter 
ends;  that  they  would  pay  the  community  enormously 
does  not  for  one  moment  enter  into  his  circle  of  ideas. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  in  the  next  decade  or 
so  the  secular  decay  and  lagging  of  the  British  railway 
services  which  is  inevitable  under  existing  conditions 
(in  speed,  in  comfort,  they  have  long  been  distanced  by 
continental  lines),  the  probable  increase  in  accidents 
due  to  economically,  administered  permanent  ways  and 
aging  stations  and  bridges,  and  the  ever  more  per- 
ceptible checking  of  British  economic  development  due 
to  this  clogging  of  the  circulatory  sytem,  will  be  of  im- 
mense value  to  the  Socialist  propaganda  as  an  object- 
lesson  in  Private  Ownership.  In  Italy  the  thing  has 
already  passed  its  inevitable  climax,  and  the  state  is 
now  struggling  valiantly  to  put  a  disorganized,  ill- 
equipped,  and  undisciplined  network  of  railways,  the 
legacy  of  a  period  of  private  enterprise,  into  tolerable 
working  order. 

§6 

In  a  second  great  public  service  there  is  a  perceptible, 
a  growing  recognition  of  the  evil  and  danger  of  allowing 


78  NEW  WORLDS   FOR   OLD 

profit-seeking  Private  Ownership  to  prevail,  and  that  is 
the  general  food  supply.  A  great  quickening  of  the 
public  imagination  in  this  matter  has  occurred  through 
the  "boom"  of  Mr.  Upton  Sinclair's  book,  The  Jungle  — 
a  book  every  student  of  the  elements  of  Socialism  should 
read.  He  accumulated  a  considerable  mass  of  facts  about 
the  Chicago  stockyards,  and  incorporated  them  with  his 
story,  and  so  enabled  people  to  realize  what  they  might 
with  a  little  imaginative  effort  have  inferred  before :  that 
the  slaughtering  of  cattle  and  the  preparation  of  meat, 
when  it  is  done  wholly  and  solely  for  profit,  that  is  to 
say  when  it  is  done  as  rapidly  and  cheaply  as  possible, 
is  done  horribly;  that  it  is  a  business  cruel  to  the  beasts, 
cruel  to  the  workers,  and  dangerous  to  the  public  health. 
The  United  States  has  long  recognized  the  inadequacy 
of  private  consciences  in  this  concern,  and  while  all  the 
vast  profits  of  the  business  go  to  the  meat-packers,  the 
community  has  maintained  an  insufficient  supply  of 
underpaid  and,  it  is  said  in  some  cases,  bribable  inspec- 
tors, to  look  after  the  public  welfare. 

In  this  country  also,  slaughtering  is  a  private  enter- 
prise but  slightly  checked  by  inspection,  and  if  we  have 
no  Chicago,  we  probably  have  all  its  mean  savings,  its 
dirt  and  carelessness  and  filth,  scattered  here  and  there 
all  over  the  country,  a  little  in  this  privately  owned 
slaughter-house,  a  little  in  that.     For  what  inducement 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM     79 

has  a  butcher  to  spend  money  and  time  in  making  his 
slaughter-house  decent,  sanitary,  and  humane  above 
the  standard  of  his  fellows  ?  To  do  that  will  only  make 
him  poor  and  insolvent.  Anyhow,  few  of  his  customers 
will  come  to  see  their  meat  butchered,  and  as  they  say 
in  the  south  of  England,  "What  the  eye  don't  see  the 
heart  don't  grieve." 

Many  witnesses  concur  in  declaring  that  our  common 
jam,  pickle,  and  preserve  trade  is  carried  on  under 
equally  filthy  conditions.  If  it  is  not,  it  is  a  miracle,  in 
view  of  the  inducements  the  Private  Owner  has  to  cut  his 
expenses,  economize  on  premises  and  wages,  and  buy  his 
fruit  as  near  decay  and  his  sugar  as  near  dirt  as  he  can. 
The  scandal  of  our  milk  supply  is  an  open  one;  it  is 
more  and  more  evident  that  so  long  as  Private  Ownership 
rules  in  the  milk  trade,  we  can  never  be  sure  that  at  every 
point  in  the  course  of  the  milk  from  cow  to  consumer 
there  will  not  creep  in  harmful  and  dishonest  profit- 
making  elements.  The  milking  is  too  often  done 
dirtily  from  dirty  cows  and  into  dirty  vessels  —  why 
should  a  business  man  fool  away  his  profits  in  paying  for 
scrupulous  cleanliness  when  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
tell  at  sight  whether  milk  is  clean  or  dirty  ?  —  and  there 
come  more  or  less  harmful  dilutions  and  adulterations 
and  exposures  to  infection  at  every  handling,  at  every 
chance  at  profit-making.     The  unavoidable  inefficiency 


80  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

of  the  private  milk  trade  reflects  itself  in  infant  mor- 
tality ;  we  pay  our  national  tribute  to  private  enterprise  in 
milk  —  a  tribute  of  many  thousands  of  babies  every  year. 
We  try  to  reduce  this  tribute  by  inspection.  But  why 
should  the  state  pay  money  for  inspection,  upon  keeping 
highly  trained  and  competent  persons  merely  to  pry 
and  persecute  in  order  that  private  incompetent  people 
should  reap  profits  with  something  short  of  a  maximum 
of  child  murder?  It  would  be  much  simpler  to  set  to 
work  directly,  employ  and  train  these  private  persons, 
and  run  the  dairies  and  milk  distribution  ourselves. 

There  is  an  equally  strong  case  for  a  public  handling  of 
bakehouses  and  the  bread  supply.  Already  the  public 
is  put  to  great  and  entirely  unremunerative  expense  in 
inspecting  and  checking  weights  and  hunting  down  the 
grosser  instances  of  adulteration,  grubbiness,  and  dirt, 
and  with  it  all  the  common  bakehouse  remains  for  the 
most  part  a  subterranean  haunt  of  rats,  mice,  and  cock- 
roaches, and  the  ordinary  baker's  bread  is  so  insipid 
and  unnutritious  that  a  great  number  of  more  prosperous 
people  nowadays  find  it  advantageous  to  health  and 
pocket  alike  to  bake  at  home.  A  considerable  amount 
of  physical  degeneration  may  be  connected  with  the  gen- 
eral poorness  of  our  bread.  The  plain  fact  of  the  case  is 
that  our  population  will  never  get  good  wholesome  bread 
from  the  private  owner's  bakehouse,  until  it  employs 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM     81 

one  skilled  official  to  watch  every  half  dozen  bakers,  and 
another  to  watch  him;  and  it  seems  altogether  saner 
and  cheaper  to  abolish  the  private  owner  in  this  business 
also  and  do  the  job  cleanly,  honestly,  and  straight- 
forwardly in  proper  buildings  with  properly  paid  labour, 
as  a  public  concern. 

Now  what  has  been  said  of  the  food  supply  is  still  truer 
of  the  trade  in  fuel.  Between  the  consumer  and  the 
collier  is  a  string  of  private  persons  each  resolved  to 
squeeze  every  penny  of  profit  out  of  the  coal  on  its  way 
to  the  cheap  and  wasteful  grate  one  finds  in  the  jerry- 
built  homes  of  the  poor.  In  addition  there  is  every 
winter  now,  either  in  Great  Britain  or  America,  a 
manipulation  of  the  coal  market  and  a  more  or  less 
severe  coal  famine.  Coal  is  jerked  up  to  unprece- 
dented prices,  and  the  small  consumer,  who  has  no 
place  for  storage,  who  must  buy,  if  not  from  day  to  day, 
from  week  to  week,  finds  he  must  draw  upon  his  food 
fund  and  his  savings  to  meet  the  Private  Owner's  raised 
demands  or  freeze.  Every  such  coal  famine  reaps  its 
harvest  for  death  of  old  people  and  young  children,  and 
wipes  out  so  many  thousands  of  savings-bank  accounts 
and  hoarded  shillings.  Consider  the  essential  imbecil- 
ity of  allowing  the  nation's  life  and  the  nation's  thrift  to 
be  preyed  upon  for  profit  in  this  way  !  Is  it  possible  to 
doubt  that  the  civilized  community  of  the  future  will 


82  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

have  to  resume  possession  of  all  its  stores  of  fuel,  will 
keep  itself  informed  of  the  fluctuating  needs  of  its 
population,  and  will  distribute  and  sell  coal,  gas,  and  oil 
—  not  for  the  maximum  profit,  but  the  maximum  general 
welfare  ?  ^ 

Another  great  branch  of  trade  in  which  private 
ownership  and  private  freedom  is  manifestly  antago- 
nistic to  the  public  welfare  is  the  Drink  Traffic.  Here 
we  have  a  commodity,  essentially  a  drug,  its  use  readily 
developing  a  vice,  deleterious  at  its  best,  complex  in 
composition  and  particularly  susceptible  to  adulteration 
and  the  enhancement  of  its  attraction  by  poisonous 
ingredients  and  indeed  to  every  sort  of  mischievous 
secret  manipulation.  Probably  nothing  is  more  rarely 
found  pure  and  honest  than  beer  or  whiskey;  whiskey 
begins  to  be  blended  and  doctored  before  it  leaves  the 
distillery.  And  we  allow  the  production  and  dis- 
tribution of  this  drug  of  alcoholic  drink  to  be  from  first 
to  last  a  source  of  private  profit !  We  so  contrive  it 
that  we  put  money  prizes  upon  the  propaganda  of 
drink.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  drink  is  not  only  made 
by  adulteration  far  more  evil  than  it  naturally  is,  but 
that  it  is  forced  upon  the  public  in  every  possible  way  ? 

1  In  Dakota,  1906-1907,  private  enterprise  led  to  a  particularly- 
severe  coal  famine  in  the  bitterest  weather,  and  the  shortage  was 
felt  so  severely  that  the  population  rose  and  attacked  and  stopped 
passing  coal  trains. 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM     83 

"He  tempts  them  to  drink,"  I  have  heard  a  clergyman 
say  of  his  village  publican.  But  what  else  did  he  think 
the  publican  was  there  for  ?  —  to  preach  total  absti- 
nence ?  Naturally,  inevitably,  the  whole  of  the  Trade 
is  a  propaganda,  not  of  drunkenness,  but  of  habitual 
heavy  drinking.  The  more  successful  propagandists, 
the  great  brewers  and  distillers,  grow  rich  just  in  the 
proportion  that  people  consume  beer  and  spirits;  they 
gain  honour  and  peerages  in  the  measure  of  their 
success. 

It  is  very  interesting  to  the  Socialist  to  trace  the  long 
struggle  of  the  temperance  movement  against  its  ini- 
tial ideas  of  freedom,  and  to  see  how  inevitably  the  most 
reluctant  and  unlikely  people  have  been  forced  to  recog- 
nize private  ownership  in  this  trade  and  for  profit  as  the 
ultimate  evil.  I  am  delighted  to  have  at  hand  an  excel- 
lent little  tract  by  "A  Ratepayer,"  National  Efficiency 
and  the  Drink  Traffic.  It  has  a  preface  by  Mr.  Haldane, 
—  who  as  one  of  our  clearest-thinking  statesmen  must 
come  to  outright  Socialism  sooner  or  later  in  spite  of 
his  recent  repudiations,  and  it  is  as  satisfactory  a 
demonstration  of  the  absolute  necessity  of  thorough- 
going Socialism  in  this  particular  field  as  any  Socialist 
could  wish.  One  encounters  the  Bishop  of  Chester,  for 
example,  in  its  pages  talking  the  purest  Socialism,  and 
making  the  most  luminous  admissions  of  the  impossi- 


84  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

bility  of  continued  private  control,  in  phrases  that 
need  but  a  few  verbal  changes  to  apply  equally  to  milk, 
to  meat,  to  bread,  to  housing,  to  bookselling.^ 

§7 

Land  and  housing,  railways,  food,  drink,  coal,  in  each 
of  these  great  general  interests  there  is  a  separate  strong 
case  for  the  substitution  of  collective  control  for  the 
private  ownership  methods  of  the  present  time.  There 
is  a  great  and  growing  number  of  people  like  "A  Rate- 
payer" and  Mr.  Haldane,  who  do  not  call  themselves 
Socialists,  but  who  are  yet  strongly  tinged  with  Socialist 
conceptions,  who  are  convinced — some  in  the  case  of  the 
land,  some  in  the  case  of  the  drink  trade  or  the  milk  — 
that  private  ownership  and  working  for  profit  must  cease. 
But  they  will  not  admit  a  general  principle ;  they  argue 
each  case  on  its  merits. 

The  Socialist  maintains  that,  albeit  the  details  of  each 

problem  must  be  studied  apart,  there  does  underlie  all 

these  cases  and  the  whole  economic  situation  at  the 

present  time  one  general  fact,  that  through  our  whole 

social  system,  from  top  to  base,  we  find  things  under  the 

influence  of  a  misleading  idea  that  must  be  changed, 

and  which,  until  it  is  changed,  will  continue  to  work  out 

*  For  a  clear  and  admirable  account  of  the  Socialist  attitude 
to  the  temperance  question  see  the  tract  on  Municipal  Drink  Traffic, 
published  by  the  Fabian  Society;  price  one  penny. 


SECOND  MAIN  GENERALIZATION  OF  SOCIALISM     85 

in  waste,  unserviceableness,  cramped  lives,  and  suffering 
and  death.  Each  man  is  for  himself,  that  is  this  mis- 
leading idea,  seeking,  perforce,  ends  discordant  with 
the  general  welfare.  Who  serves  the  community  with- 
out exacting  pay  goes  under;  who  exacts  pay  without 
service,  prospers  and  continues ;  success  is  not  to  do  well, 
it  is  to  have  and  to  get;  failure  is  not  to  do  ill,  it  is  to 
lose  and  not  have;  and  under  these  conditions  how  can 
we  expect  anything  but  dislocated,  unsatisfying  service 
at  every  turn  ? 

The  contemporary  Christian  moralist  and  the  social 
satirist  would  appeal  to  the  Owner's  sense  of  duty;  he 
would  declare  in  a  platitudinous  tone  that  property  had 
its  duties  as  well  as  its  rights  and  so  forth.  The  Socialist, 
however,  looks  a  little  deeper,  and  puts  the  thing  differ- 
ently. He  brings  both  rights  and  duties  to  a  keener 
scrutiny.  What  underlies  all  these  social  disorders,  he 
alleges,  is  one  simple  thing,  a  misconception  of  property, 
an  unreasonable  exaggeration,  an  accumulated  inherited 
exaggeration  of  the  idea  of  property.  He  says  the  idea 
of  private  property,  which  is  just  and  reasonable  in  rela- 
tion to  intimate  personal  things,  to  clothes,  appliances, 
books,  one's  home  or  apartments,  the  garden  one  loves, 
or  the  horse  one  rides,  has  become  unreasonably  exag- 
gerated until  it  obsesses  the  world ;  that  the  freedom  we 
have  given  men  to  claim  and  own  and  hold  the  land  upon 


86  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

which  we  must  Hve;  the  fuel  we  burn,  the  supplies  of 
food  and  metal  we  require,  the  railways  and  ships  upon 
which  our  business  goes,  and  to  fix  what  prices  they  like 
to  exact  for  all  these  services,  leads  to  the  impoverish- 
ment and  practical  enslavement  of  the  mass  of  mankind. 

And  so  he  comes  to  his  second  main  generalization 
which  I  may  perhaps  set  out  in  these  words :  — 

The  idea  of  the  private  ovmership  of  things  and  the  rights 
of  owners  is  enormously  and  mischievously  exaggerated  in 
the  contemporary  world.  The  conception  of  private  prop- 
erty has  been  extended  to  land,  to  material,  to  the  values  and 
resources  accumulated  by  past  generations,  to  a  vast  variety 
of  things  that  are  properly  the  inheritance  of  the  whole  race. 
As  a  result  of  this,  there  is  an  enormous  obstruction  and 
waste  of  human  energy  and  an  entire  loss  of  opportunity 
and  freedom  for  the  mass  of  mankind;  progress  is  re- 
tarded; there  is  a  vast  amount  of  avoidable  wretchedness, 
cruelty,  and  injustice. 

The  Socialist  holds  that  the  community  as  a  whole 
should  be  inalienably  the  owner  and  administrator  of  the 
land,  of  all  raw  materials,  of  all  values  and  resources  ac- 
cumulated from  the  past,  and  that  all  private  property 
must  be  of  a  terminable  nature,  reverting  to  the  community, 
and  subject  to  the  general  welfare. 

This  is  the  second  of  the  twin  generalizations  upon 
which  the  edifice  of  modern  Socialism  rests.     Like  the 


SECOND   MAIN  GENERALIZATION   OF  SOCIALISM      87 

first,  and  like  the  practical  side  of  all  sound  religious 
teaching,  it  is  a  specific  application  of  one  general  rule 
of  conduct,  and  that  is  —  the  subordination  of  the  in- 
dividual motive  to  the  happiness  and  welfare  of  the 
species. 

§8 

But  now  the  reader  unaccustomed  to  Socialist  dis- 
cussion will  begin  to  see  the  crude  form  of  the  answer  to 
the  question  raised  by  the  previous  chapter;  he  will  see 
the  resources  from  which  the  enlargement  of  human  life 
we  there  contemplated  is  to  be  derived,  and  realize  the 
economic  methods  to  be  pursued.  Collective  ownership 
is  the  necessary  corollary  of  collective  responsibility. 
There  are  to  be  no  private  landowners,  no  private  bank- 
ers and  lenders  of  money,  no  private  insurance  adven- 
turers, no  private  railway  owners  nor  shipping  owners, 
no  private  mine  owners,  oil  kings,  silver  kings,  coal  and 
wheat  forestallers,  or  the  like.  All  this  realm  of  property 
is  to  be  resumed  by  the  state,  is  to  be  state-owned  and 
state-managed,  and  the  vast  revenues  that  are  now  de- 
voted to  private  ends  will  go  steadily  to  feed,  maintain, 
and  educate  a  new  and  better  generation,  to  promote 
research  and  advance  science,  to  build  new  houses,  de- 
velop fresh  resources,  plant,  plan,  beautify  and  recon- 
struct the  world. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   SPIRIT   OF   GAIN   AND   THE   SPIRIT   OF  SERVICE 

§1 

We  have  stated  now  how  the  constructive  plan  of 
Socialism  aims  to  replace  the  accepted  ideas  about  two 
almost  fundamental  human  relations  by  broader  and 
less  fiercely  egotistical  conceptions ;  how  it  denies  a  man 
property  in  his  wife  and  children,  how  it  would  secure 
their  material  welfare,  —  leaving,  however,  all  his  other 
relations  with  them  intact,  —  and  how  it  asserts  that  a 
vast  range  of  inanimate  things  also  which  are  now  held 
as  private  property  must  be  regarded  as  the  inalienable 
possession  of  the  whole  community.  This  change  in  the 
circle  of  ideas  (as  the  Herbartians  put  it)  is  the  essence 
of  the  Socialist  project. 

It  means  no  little  change.  It  means  a  general  change 
in  the  spirit  of  living ;  it  means  a  change  from  the  spirit 
of  gain  (which  now  necessarily  rules  our  lives)  to  the 
spirit  of  service. 

I  have  tried  to  show  in  the  preceding  chapter  that 
Socialism  seeks  to  make  life  less  squalid  and  cruel,  less 

88 


THE   SPIRIT  OF  GAIN  AND  OF   SERVICE  89 

degrading  and  dwarfing  for  the  children  that  are  born  into 
it,  and  I  have  tried  also  to  make  clear  that  realization  of, 
and  revolt  against,  the  bad  management  and  waste  and 
muddle  which  result  from  our  present  economic  system. 
I  want  now  to  point  out  that  Socialism  seeks  to  en- 
noble the  intimate  personal  life,  by  checking  and  dis- 
couraging passions  that  now  run  rampart,  and  by  giving 
wider  scope  for  passions  that  are  now  thwarted  and  sub- 
dued. The  Socialist  declares  that  life  is  now  needlessly 
dishonest,  base,  and  mean,  because  our  present  social 
organization,  such  as  it  is,  makes  an  altogether  too 
powerful  appeal  to  some  of  the  very  meanest  elements 
in  our  nature. 

Not  perhaps  to  the  lowest.  There  can  be  no  disputing 
that  our  present  civilization  does  discourage  much  of 
the  innate  bestiality  of  man;  that  it  helps  people  to  a 
measure  of  continence,  cleanliness,  and  mutual  tolera- 
tion; that  it  does  much  to  suppress  brute  violence,  the 
spirit  of  lawlessness,  cruelty,  and  wanton  destruction. 
But  on  the  other  hand  it  does  also  check  and  cripple 
generosity  and  frank  truthfulness,  any  disinterested  cre- 
ative passion,  the  love  of  beauty,  the  passion  for  truth 
and  research,  and  it  stimulates  avarice,  parsimony,  over- 
reaching, usury,  falsehood,  and  secrecy,  by  making 
money-getting  its  criterion  of  intercourse. 

Whether  we  like  it  or  not,  we  who  live  in  this  world 


90  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

to-day  find  we  must  either  devote  a  considerable  amount 
of  our  attention  to  getting  and  keeping  money  and 
shape  our  activities,  or,  if  you  will,  distort  them,  with  a 
constant  reference  to  that  process,  or  we  must  accept 
futility.  Whatever  powers  men  want  to  exercise,  what- 
ever service  they  wish  to  do,  it  is  a  preliminary  condition 
for  most  of  them  that  they  must  by  earning  something  or 
selling  something,  achieve  opportunity.  If  they  cannot 
turn  their  gift  into  some  salable  thing  or  get  some  prop- 
ertied man  to  "patronize"  them,  they  cannot  exercise 
these  gifts.  The  gift  for  getting  is  the  supreme  gift,  all 
others  bow  before  it. 

Now  this  is  not  a  thing  that  comes  naturally  out  of  the 
quality  of  man;  it  is  the  result  of  a  blind  and  complex 
social  growth,  of  this  set  of  ideas  working  against  that, 
and  of  these  influences  modifying  those.  The  idea  of 
property  has  run  wild  and  become  a  choking  universal 
weed.  It  is  not  the  natural  master-passion  of  a  whole- 
some man  to  want  constantly  to  own.  People  talk  of 
Socialism  as  being  a  proposal  "against  human  nature," 
and  they  would  have  us  believe  this  life  of  anxiety,  of 
parsimony  and  speculation,  of  mercenary  considerations 
and  forced  toil  we  all  lead,  is  the  complete  and  final  ex- 
pression of  the  social  possibilities  of  the  human  soul. 
But,  indeed,  it  is  only  quite  abnormal  people,  people  of  a 
narrow,   limited,  specialized  intelligence,   Rockefellers^ 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GAIN  AND  OF  SERVICE  91 

Morgans,  and  the  like,  people  neither  great  nor  beautiful, 
mere  financial  monomaniacs,  who  can  keep  themselves 
devoted  to  and  concentrated  upon  gain.  To  the  major- 
ity of  capable  good  human  stuff,  buying  and  selling,  sav- 
ing and  investing,  insuring  one's  self  and  managing  prop- 
erty, is  a  mass  of  uncongenial,  irrational,  and  tiresome 
procedure,  conflicting  with  the  general  trend  of  instinct 
and  the  finer  interests  of  life.  The  great  mass  of  men  and 
women  indeed  find  the  whole  process  so  against  nature, 
that  in  spite  of  all  the  miseries  of  poverty,  all  the  slavery 
of  the  economic  disadvantage,  they  remain  poor,  they 
cannot  urge  themselves  to  this  irksome  cunning  game  of 
besting  the  world.  Most,  in  a  sort  of  despair,  make  no 
effort ;  many  resort  to  that  floundering  endeavour  to  get 
by  accident,  gambling;  many  achieve  a  precarious  and 
unsatisfactory  gathering  of  possessions,  a  few  houses,  a 
claim  on  a  field,  a  few  hundred  pounds  in  some  invest- 
ment as  incalculable  as  a  kite  in  a  gale;  just  a  small 
minority  have  and  get  —  for  the  most  part  either  inheri- 
tors of  riches  or  energetic  people  who,  through  a  real 
dulness  toward  the  better  and  nobler  aspects  of  life,  can 
give  themselves  almost  entirely  to  grabbing  and  accu- 
mulation. To  such  as  these,  all  common  men  who  are 
not  Socialists,  do  in  effect  conspire  to  give  the  world. 

The  anti-Socialist  argues  that  out  of  this  evil  of  en- 
couraged and  stimulated  avarice  comes  good,  and  that 


92  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

this  peculiar  meanly  greedy  type  that  predominates  in 
the  individualist  world  to-day,  the  Rockefeller-Harriman 
type,  "creates"  great  businesses,  exploits  the  possibili- 
ties of  nature,  gives  mankind  railways,  power,  com- 
modities. As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  modern  intelligent 
community  is  quite  capable  of  doing  all  these  things 
infinitely  better  for  itself,  and  the  beneficent  influence  of 
commerce  may  easily  become,  and  does  easily  become, 
the  basis  of  a  cant.  Exploitation  by  private  persons  is 
no  doubt  a  necessary  condition  to  economic  development 
in  an  illiterate  community  of  low  intelligence,  just  as 
flint  implements  marked  a  necessary  phase  in  the  social 
development  of  mankind;  but  to-day  the  avaricious 
getter,  like  some  obsolescent  organ  in  the  body,  con- 
sumes strength  and  threatens  health.  And  to-day  he  is 
far  more  mischievous  than  ever  he  was  before,  because 
of  the  weakened  hold  of  the  old  religious  organization 
upon  his  imagination.  For  the  most  part  the  great  for- 
tunes of  the  modern  world  have  been  built  up  by  pro- 
ceedings either  not  socially  beneficial,  or  in  some  cases 
positively  harmful.  Consider  some  of  the  commoner 
methods  of  growing  rich.  There  is  first  the  selling  of 
rubbish  for  money,  exemplified  by  the  great  patent- 
medicine  fortunes  and  the  fortunes  achieved  by  the 
debasement  of  journalism,  the  sale  of  prize-competition 
magazines  and  the  like;   next  there  is  forestalling,  the 


THE   SPIRIT  OF  GAIN   AND  OF  SERVICE  93 

making  of  "corners"  in  such  commodities  as  corn, 
nitrates,  borax,  and  the  Hke ;  then  there  is  the  capture 
of  what  Americans  call  "franchises,"  securing  at  low 
terms  by  expedients  that  usually  will  not  bear  examina- 
tion, the  right  to  run  some  profitable  public  service 
for  private  profit  which  would  be  better  done  in  public 
hands  —  the  various  private  enterprises  for  urban  traffic, 
for  example ;  then  there  are  the  various  more  or  less  com- 
plex financial  operations,  watering  stock,  "recon- 
structing," "shaking  out"  the  ordinary  shareholder, 
which  transfer  the  savings  of  the  common  struggling 
person  to  the  financial  magnate.  All  the  activities  in 
this  list  are  more  or  less  anti-social,  yet  it  is  by  practising 
them  that  the  great  successes  of  recent  years  have  been 
achieved.  Fortunes  of  a  second  rank  have  no  doubt 
been  made  by  building  up  manufactures  and  industries 
of  various  types  by  persons  who  have  known  how  to  buy 
labour  cheap,  organize  it  well,  and  sell  its  products  dear ; 
but  even  in  these  cases  the  social  advantage  of  the  new 
product  is  often  largely  discounted  by  the  labour  con- 
ditions. It  is  impossible,  indeed,  directly  one  faces 
current  facts,  to  keep  up  the  argument  of  the  public  good 
achieved  by  men  under  the  incentive  of  gain  and  the 
necessity  of  that  incentive  to  progress  and  economic 
development. 

Now  not  only  is  it  true  that  the  subordination  of  our 


94  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

affairs  to  this  spirit  of  gain  places  our  world  in  the  hands 
of  a  peculiar,  acquisitive,  uncreative,  wary  type  of  per- 
son, and  that  the  mass  of  people  hate  serving  the  spirit 
of  gain  and  are  forced  to  do  so  through  the  obsession  of 
the  whole  community  by  this  idea  of  Private  Ownership ; 
but  it  is  also  true  that  even  now  the  real  driving  force 
that  gets  the  world  along  is  not  that  spirit  at  all,  but  the 
spirit  of  service.  Even  to-day  it  would  be  impossible 
for  the  world  to  get  along  if  the  mass  of  its  population  was 
really  specialized  for  gain.  A  world  of  Rockefellers, 
Morgans,  and  Rothschilds  would  perish  miserably  after  a 
vigorous  campaign  of  mutual  skinning ;  it  is  only  because 
the  common  run  of  men  is  better  than  these  profit-hunters 
that  any  real  and  human  things  are  achieved. 

Let  us  go  into  this  aspect  of  the  question  a  little  more 
fully,  because  it  is  one  that  appears  to  be  least  clearly 
grasped  by  those  who  discuss  Socialism  to-day. 

§2 

This  fact  must  be  insisted  upon  that  most  of  the  work 
of  the  world  and  all  the  good  work  is  done  to-day  for 
some  other  motive  than  gain;  that  profit-seeking  not 
only  is  not  the  moving  power  of  the  world,  but  that  it 
cannot  be,  that  it  runs  counter  to  the  doing  of  effectual 
work  in  every  department  of  life. 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GAIN  AND  OF  SERVICE  95 

It  is  hard  to  know  how  to  set  about  proving  a  fact 
that  is  to  the  writer's  perception  so  universally  obvious. 
One  can  only  appeal  to  the  intelligent  reader  to  use  his 
own  personal  observation  upon  the  people  about  him. 
Everywhere  he  will  see  the  property-owner  doing 
nothing,  the  profit-seeker  busy  with  unproductive 
efforts,  with  the  writing  of  advertisements,  the  mis- 
representation of  goods,  the  concoction  of  a  plausible 
prospectus,  and  the  extraction  of  profits  from  the  toil  of 
others,  while  the  real  necessary  work  of  the  world, — I 
don't  mean  the  labour  and  toil  only,  but  the  intelligent 
direction,  the  real  planning  and  designing  and  inquiry,  the 
management  and  the  evolution  of  ideas  and  methods,  — 
is  in  the  enormous  majority  of  cases  done  by  salaried 
individuals  working  either  for  a  fixed  wage  and  the  hope 
of  increments  having  no  proportional  relation  to  the 
work  done,  or  for  a  wage  varying  within  definite  limits. 
All  the  engineering  design,  all  architecture,  all  our  public 
services,  the  exquisite  work  of  our  museum  control,  for 
example,  all  the  big  wholesale  and  retail  businesses,  al- 
most all  big  industrial  concerns,  mines,  estates, — all  these 
things  are  really  in  the  hands  of  salaried  or  quasi-salaried 
persons  now,  just  as  they  would  be  under  Socialism. 
They  are  only  possible  now  because  all  these  managers, 
officials,  employees,  are  as  a  class  unreasonably  honest 
and  loyal,  are  interested  in  their  work  and  anxious  to 


96  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

do  it  well,  and  do  not  seek  profits  in  every  transaction 
they  handle.  Give  them  even  a  small  measure  of  security 
and  they  are  content  with  interesting  work ;  they  are  glad 
to  set  aside  the  urgent  perpetual  search  for  personal  gain 
that  Individualists  have  persuaded  themselves  is  the 
ruling  motive  of  mankind ;  they  are  glad  to  set  these  aside 
altogether  and,  as  the  phrase  goes,  "get  something 
done."  And  this  is  true  all  up  and  down  the  social 
scale.  A  bricklayer  is  no  good  unless  he  can  be  in- 
terested in  laying  bricks.  One  knows  whenever  a  do- 
mestic servant  becomes  mercenary,  when  she  ceases  to 
take,  as  people  say,  "a,  pride  in  her  work"  and  thinks 
only  of  "tips"  and  getting,  she  becomes  impossible. 
Does  a  signalman  every  time  he  pulls  over  a  lever,  or  a 
groom  galloping  a  horse,  think  of  his  wages  —  or  want  to  ? 
I  will  confess  I  find  it  hard  to  write  with  any  patience 
and  civility  of  this  argument  that  humanity  will  not 
work  except  for  greed  or  need  of  money  and  only  in 
proportion  to  the  getting.  It  is  so  patently  absurd.  I 
suppose  the  reasonable  anti-Socialist  will  hardly  main- 
tain it  seriously  with  that  crudity.  He  will  qualify.  He 
will  say  that  although  it  may  be  true  that  good  work  is 
always  done  for  the  interest  of  the  doing  or  in  the  spirit 
of  service,  yet  in  order  to  get  and  keep  people  at  work  and 
to  keep  the  standard  high  through  periods  of  indolence 
and  distraction,  there  must  be  the  dread  of  dismissal 


THE   SPIRIT  OF  GAIN   AND  OF  SERVICE  97 

and  the  stimulating  eye  of  the  owner.  That  certainly  puts 
the  case  a  good  deal  less  basely  and  much  more  plausibly. 

There  is  perhaps  this  much  truth  in  that,  that  most 
people  do  need  a  certain  stimulus  to  exertion  and  a  cer- 
tain standard  of  achievement  to  do  their  best,  but  to 
say  that  this  is  provided  by  private  ownership  and  can 
only  be  provided  by  private  ownership,  is  an  altogether 
different  thing.  Is  the  British  Telephone  Service,  for 
example,  kept  as  efficient  as  it  is — which  isn't  very  much, 
by  the  bye,  in  the  way  of  efficiency  —  by  the  protests  of 
the  shareholders  or  of  the  subscribers  ?  Does  the  grocer's 
errand  boy  loiter  any  less  than  his  brother  who  carries 
the  Post-Office  telegrams  ?  In  the  matter  of  the  public 
milk  supply  again,  would  not  an  intelligently  critical 
public,  anxious  for  its  milk  good  and  early,  be  a  far  more 
formidable  master  than  a  speculative  proprietor  in  the 
back  room  of  a  creamery?  And  when  one  comes  to 
large  business  organizations  managed  by  officials  and 
owned  by  dispersed  shareholders,  the  contrast  is  all  to 
the  advantage  of  the  community. 

No !  the  only  proper  virtues  in  work,  the  ones  that 
have  to  be  relied  upon,  and  developed  and  rewarded  in 
the  civilized  state  we  Socialists  are  seeking  to  bring  about, 
are  the  spirit  of  service  and  the  passion  for  doing  well, 
the  honourable  competition  not  to  get  but  to  do. 
By  sweating  and  debasing  urgency,  we  get  meagrely 


98  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

done  what  we  might  get  handsomely  done  by  the  Good 
Will  of  emancipated  mankind.  For  all  who  really  make, 
who  really  do,  the  imperative  of  gain  is  the  inconvenience, 
the  enemy.  Every  artist,  every  scientific  investigator, 
every  organizer,  every  good  workman  knows  that. 
Every  good  architect  knows  that  this  is  so  and  can  tell 
of  time  after  time  when  he  has  sacrificed  manifest  profit 
and  taken  a  loss  to  get  a  thing  done  as  he  wanted  it  done, 
right  and  well ;  every  good  doctor,  too,  has  turned  from 
profit  and  high  fees  to  the  moving  and  interesting  case, 
to  the  demands  of  knowledge  and  the  public  health; 
every  teacher  worth  his  or  her  salt  can  witness  to  the 
perpetual  struggle  between  business  advantage  and  right 
teaching;  every  writer  has  faced  the  alternative  of  his 
aesthetic  duty  and  the  search  for  beauty  on  the  one  hand 
and  the  "  salable "  on  the  other.  All  this  is  as  true  of 
ordinary  making  as  of  special  creative  work.  Every 
plumber  capable  of  his  business  hates  to  have  to  paint 
his  lead  work;  every  carpenter  knows  the  disgust  of 
turning  out  unfinished  "cheap"  work,  however  well  it 
pays  him;  every  tolerable  cook  can  feel  shame  for  an 
unsatisfying  dish,  and  none  the  less  shame  because  by 
making  it,  materials  are  saved  and  economies  achieved. 
And  yet,  with  all  the  facts  clear  as  day  before  any  ob- 
servant person,  we  are  content  to  live  on  in  an  economic 
system    that   raises   every   man   who   subordinates    these 


THE   SPIRIT  OF  GAIN  AND  OF  SERVICE  99 

wholesome  prides  and  desires  to  watchful,  incessant  getting, 
over  the  heads  of  every  other  type  of  character;  that  in  effect 
gives  all  the  power  and  influence  in  our  state  to  success- 
ful getters;  that  subordinates  art,  direction,  wisdom, 
and  labour  to  these  inferior  narrow  noien,  these  men  who 
clutch  and  keep. 

Our  social  system,  based  on  Private  Ownership,  en- 
courages and  glorifies  this  spirit  of  gain,  and  cripples  and 
thwarts  the  spirit  of  service.  You  need  but  have  your 
eyes  once  opened  to  its  influence,  and  thereafter  you  will 
never  cease  to  see  how  the  needs  and  imperatives  of 
Property  taint  the  honour  and  dignity  of  human  life. 
Just  where  life  should  flower  most  freely  into  splendour, 
this  chill,  malign  obsession  most  nips  and  cripples.  The 
law  that  makes  getting  and  keeping  an  imperative  neces- 
sity poisons  and  destroys  the  freedom  of  men  and  women 
in  love,  in  art,  and  in  every  concern  in  which  spiritual 
or  physical  beauty  should  be  the  inspiring  and  deter- 
mining factor.  Behind  all  the  handsome  professions  of 
romantic  natures  the  gaunt  facts  of  monetary  necessity 
remain  the  rulers  of  life.  Every  youth  who  must  sell 
his  art  and  capacity  for  gain,  every  girl  who  must  sell 
herself  for  money,  is  one  more  sacrifice  to  the  Minotaur 
of  Private  Ownership  —  before  the  Theseus  of  Socialism 
comes. 

Opponents  of  Socialism,  ignoring  all  these  things  and 


100  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

inventing  with  that  profusion  which  is  so  remarkable  a 
trait  of  the  Anti-Sociahst  campaign,  are  wont  to  declare 
that  we,  whose  first  and  last  thought  is  the  honour  and 
betterment  of  life,  seek  to  destroy  all  beauty  and  freedom 
in  love,  accuse  us  of  aiming  at  some  "  human  stud  farm." 
The  reader  will  measure  the  justice  of  that  by  the  next 
chapter,  but  here  I  would  say  that  just  as  the  private 
ownership  of  all  that  is  necessary  to  humanity,  except 
the  air  and  sunlight  and  a  few  things  that  it  has  been 
difficult  to  appropriate,  debases  work  and  all  the  com- 
mon services  of  life,  so  also  it  taints  and  thwarts  the 
emotions,  and  degrades  the  intimate  physical  and  emo- 
tional existence  of  an  innumerable  multitude  of  people. 

All  this  amounts  to  a  huge  impoverishment  of  life,  a 
loss  of  existence  and  discrimination  of  rich  and  subtle 
values.  Human  existence  to-day  is  a  mere  tantalizing 
intimation  of  what  it  might  be.  It  is  frost-bitten  and 
dwarfed  from  palace  to  slum.  It  is  not  only  that  a 
great  mass  of  our  population  is  deprived  of  space, 
beauty,  and  pleasure,  but  that  a  large  proportion  of 
such  space,  beauty,  and  pleasure  as  there  are  in  the 
world,  must  necessarily  have  a  meretricious  taint  and  be 
in  the  nature  of  things  bought  and  made  for  pay. 

§3 

If  there  is  one  profession  more  than  another  in  which 
devotion  is  implied  and  assumed,  it  is  that  of  the  doctor. 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GAIN  AND  OF  SERVICE         101 

It  happens  that  on  the  morning  when  this  chapter  was 
drafted,  I  came  upon  the  paragraph  that  follows;  it 
seemed  to  me  to  supply  just  one  striking  concrete  instance 
of  how  life  is  degraded  by  our  present  system,  and  to 
offer  me  a  convenient  text  for  a  word  or  so  more  upon 
this  question  between  gain  and  service.  It's  a  little 
vague  in  its  reference  to  Mr.  Tompkins  "  of  Birmingham," 
and  I  should  not  be  surprised  if  it  were  a  considerable 
exaggeration  of  what  really  happened.  But  it  is  true 
enough  to  life  in  this,  that  it  is  a  common  practice,  a 
necessity  with  doctors  in  poor  neighbourhoods  to  insist 
inexorably  upon  a  fee  before  attendance. 

"A  case  of  medical  inhumanity  is  reported  from  Birmingham. 
A  poor  man  named  Tompkins  was  taken  seriously  ill  early  on 
Christmas  morning,  and  although  snow  was  falling  and  the 
atmosphere  was  terribly  raw,  his  wife  left  the  house  in  search  of 
a  doctor.  The  nearest  practitioner  declined  to  leave  the  house 
without  being  paid  his  fee;  a  second  imposed  the  same  condi- 
tion, and  the  woman  then  went  to  the  police  station.  As  the 
horse  ambulance  was  out,  they  could  not  help  her,  and  she  tried 
other  doctors.  In  all  the  poor  woman  called  on  eight,  and  the 
only  one  who  did  not  decline  to  get  up  without  his  fee  was  down 
with  influenza.  Eventually  a  local  chemist  was  persuaded  to 
see  the  man,  and  he  ordered  his  removal  to  the  hospital." 

That  is  the  story.  You  note  the  charge  of  "inhu- 
manity" in  the  very  first  line,  and  in  much  subsequent 
press  comment  there  was  the  same  note.    Apparently 


102  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

everyone  expects  a  doctor  to  be  ready  at  any  point  in  the 
day  or  night  to  attend  anybody  for  nothing.  Most 
Socialists  are  disposed  to  agree  with  the  spirit  of  that 
expectation.  A  practising  doctor  should  be  in  Hfe-long 
perpetual  war  against  pain  and  disease,  just  as  a  cam- 
paigning soldier  is  continually  alert  and  serving.  But 
existing  conditions  will  not  permit  that.  Existing  con- 
ditions require  the  doctor  to  get  his  fee  at  any  cost;  if 
he  goes  about  doing  work  for  nothing,  they  punish  him 
with  shabbiness  and  incapacitating  need,  they  forbid 
his  marriage  or  doom  his  wife  and  children  to  poverty 
and  unhappiness.  A  doctor  must  make  money  whatever 
else  he  does  or  does  not  do,  he  must  secure  his  fees.  He 
is  a  private  adventurer,  competing  in  a  crowded  market 
for  gain,  and  keeping  his  energies  perforce  for  those  who 
can  pay  best  for  them.  To  expect  him  to  behave  like 
a  public  servant  whose  income  and  outlook  are  secure,  or 
like  a  priest  whose  church  will  never  let  him  want  or 
starve,  is  ridiculous.  If  you  put  him  on  a  footing  with 
the  green  grocer  and  coal  merchant,  you  must  expect 
him  to  behave  like  a  tradesman.  Why  should  the  press 
blame  the  poor  doctor  of  a  poor  neighbourhood  because 
a  moneyless  man  goes  short  of  medical  attendance, 
when  it  does  not  for  one  moment  blame  Mr.  J.  D. 
Rockefeller  because  a  poor  man  goes  short  of  oil,  or 
the  Duke  of  Devonshire  because  tramps  need  lodgings 


THE   SPIRIT  OF  GAIN  AND  OF  SERVICE  103 

in    Eastbourne?    One  never  reads  this  sort  of  para- 
graph :  — 

"A  case  of  commercial  inhumanity  is  reported  from  Birming- 
ham. A  poor  man  named  Tompkins  was  seriously  hungry  early 
on  Christmas  morning,  and  although  snow  was  falling  and  the 
atmosphere  was  terribly  raw,  his  wife  left  the  house  in  search  of 
food.  The  nearest  grocer  declined  to  supply  provisions  without 
being  paid  his  price ;  a  second  imposed  the  same  condition,  and 
the  woman  then  went  to  the  police  station.  As  that  is  not  a  soup 
kitchen,  they  could  not  help  her  and  she  tried  other  grocers  and 
bread  shops.  In  all  the  poor  woman  called  on  eight,  and  the 
only  one  who  did  not  decline  to  supply  food  without  payment  was 
for  some  reason  bankrupt  and  out  of  stock.  Eventually  a  local 
overseer  was  persuaded  to  see  the  man,  and  he  ordered  his 
removal  to  the  workhouse,  where  after  considerable  hardship,  he 
was  partly  appeased  with  skilly." 

I,  myself,  have  known  an  overworked,  financially 
worried  doctor  at  his  bedroom  window  call  out,  "  Have 
you  brought  the  fee?"  and  have  pitied  and  understood 
his  ugly  alternatives.  "  Once  I  began  that  sort  of  thing," 
he  explained  to  me  a  little  apologetically,  "  they'd  none 
of  them  pay  —  none." 

The  Socialists'  remedy  for  this  squalid  state  of  affairs 
is  plain  and  simple.  Medicine  is  a  public  service,  an  hon- 
ourable devotion,  it  should  no  more  be  a  matter  of  profit- 
making  than  the  food-supply  service  or  the  house-supply 
service,  or  salvation.  It  should  be  a  part  of  the  organiza- 
tion of  a  civihzed  state  to  have  a  public  health  service  of 


104  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

well-paid,  highly  educated  men  distributed  over  the 
country  and  closely  correlated  with  public  research 
departments  and  a  reserve  of  specialists,  who  would  be  as 
ready  and  eager  to  face  dangers  and  to  sacrifice  them- 
selves for  honour  and  social  necessity  as  soldiers  or  sail- 
ors. I  believe  every  honourable  man  in  the  medical 
profession  under  forty  now  would  rather  it  were  so. 
It  is  indeed  a  transition  from  private  enterprise  to  public 
organization  that  is  already  beginning.  We  have  the 
first  intimation  of  the  change  in  the  appearance  of  the 
medical  officer  of  health,  underpaid,  overworked,  and 
powerless  though  he  is  at  the  present  time.  It  cannot 
be  long  before  the  manifest  absurdity  of  our  present 
conditions  begins  a  process  of  socialization  of  the  medical 
profession  entirely  analogous  to  that  which  has  changed 
three-fourths  of  the  teachers  in  Great  Britain  from  pri- 
vate adventurers  to  public  servants  in  the  last  forty  years. 

And  that  is  the  aim  of  Socialism  all  along  the  line,  —  to 
convert  one  public  service  after  another  from  a  chaotic 
profit  scramble  of  proprietors  amidst  a  mass  of  sweated 
employees  into  a  secure  and  disciplined  service  in  which 
every  man  will  work  for  honour,  promotion,  achievement, 
and  the  commonweal. 

I  write  a  "secure  and  disciplined  service,"  and  I  intend 
by  that  not  simply  an  exterior  but  an  interior  discipline. 
Let  us  have  done  with  this  unnatural  theory  that  men 


THE   SPIRIT  OF  GAIN   AND  OF  SERVICE         105 

may  submit  unreservedly  to  the  guidance  of  "self- 
interest."  Self-interest  never  took  a  man  or  a  com- 
munity to  any  other  end  than  damnation.  For  all  ser- 
vices there  is  necessary  a  code  of  honour  and  devotion 
which  a  man  must  set  up  for  himself  and  obey,  to  which 
he  must  subordinate  a  number  of  his  impulses.  The 
must  is  seconded  by  an  internal  imperative.  Men  and 
women  want  to  have  a  code  of  honour.  In  the  army, 
for  example,  there  is  among  the  officers  particularly,  a 
tradition  of  courage,  cleanliness,  and  good  form,  more 
imperative  than  any  law ;  in  the  little  band  of  men  who 
have  given  the  world  all  that  we  mean  by  science,  the 
little  host  of  volunteers  and  underpaid  workers  who  have 
achieved  the  triumphs  of  research,  there  is  a  tradition  of 
self-abnegation  and  of  an  immense,  painstaking,  self- 
forgetful  veracity.  These  traditions  work.  They  add 
something  to  the  worth  of  every  man  who  comes  under 
them. 

Every  writer,  again,  knows  clearly  the  difference  be- 
tween gain-seeking  and  doing  good  work,  and  few  there 
are  who  have  not  at  times  done  something  as  they  say 
"to  please  themselves."  Then  in  the  studio,  for  all  the 
non-moral  protests  of  Bohemia,  there  is  a  tradition,  an 
admirable  tradition,  of  disregard  for  mercenary  impera- 
tives, a  scorn  of  shams  and  plagiarism  that  triumphs  again 
and  again  over  economic  laws.     The  public  services  of 


106  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

the  coming  civilization  will  demand,  and  will  develop,  a 
far  completer  discipline  and  tradition  of  honour.  Against 
the  development  and  persistence  of  all  such  honourable 
codes  now,  against  every  attempt  at  personal  nobility, 
at  a  new  chivalry,  at  sincere  artistry,  our  present  in- 
dividualist system  wages  pitiless  warfare ;  says  in  effect : 
"  Fools  you  are  !  Look  at  Rockefeller  !  Look  at  Pier- 
pont  Morgan  !  Look  at  Astor  !  Get  money  !  All  your 
sacrifices  only  go  to  their  enrichment.  You  cannot  serve 
humanity,  however  much  you  seek  to  do  so.  They  block 
your  way,  enormously  receptive  of  all  you  give.  All  the 
increment  of  human  achievement  goes  to  them  —  they 
own  it  h  priori  .  .  .  Get  money  !  Money  is  freedom  to 
do,  to  keep,  to  rule.  Do  you  care  nothing  for  your  wives 
and  children?  Are  you  content  to  breed  servants  and 
dependents  for  these  children  of  these  men?  Make 
things  beautiful,  make  things  abundant,  make  life  glo- 
rious !  Fools  !  if  you  work  and  sacrifice  yourselves  and 
do  not  get,  they  will  possess.  Your  sons  shall  be  the 
loan-monger's  employees,  your  daughters  handmaidens 
to  the  millionaire.  Or  if  you  cannot  face  that, go  child- 
less, and  let  your  life-work  gild  the  palace  of  the  mil- 
lionaire's still  more  acquisitive  descendants!" 

Who  can  ignore  the  base  scramble  for  money  under 
these  alternatives  ? 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GAIN  AND  OF  SERVICE         107 

§4 
But  let  me  here  insert  a  very  brief  paragraph  to 
point  out  one  particular  thing  and  that  is  that  Social- 
ism does  not  propose  to  "abolish  competition"  —  as 
many  hasty  and  foolish  antagonists  declare.  If  the 
reader  has  gone  through  what  has  preceded  this  he 
will  know  that  this  is  not  so.  Socialism  looks  to 
competition,  looks  to  competition  for  the  service  and 
improvement  of  the  world.  And  in  order  that  compe- 
tition between  man  and  man  may  have  free  play,  So- 
cialism seeks  to  abolish  one  particular  form  of  competi- 
tion, the  competition  to  get  and  hold  property  that 
degrades  our  present  world.  But  it  would  leave  men 
free  to  compete  for  fame,  for  service,  for  salaries,  for 
position  and  authority,  for  leisure,  for  love  and  honour. 

§5 

But  now  let  me  take  up  certain  difhculties  the  student 
of  Socialism  encounters.  He  comes  thus  far  perhaps  with 
the  Socialist  argument,  and  then  his  imagination  gets  to 
work  trying  to  picture  a  world  in  which  a  moiety  of  the 
population,  perhaps  even  the  larger  moiety,  is  employed 
by  the  state,  and  in  which  the  whole  population  is  edu- 
cated by  the  state  and  insured  of  a  decent  and  com- 
fortable care  and  subsistence  during  youth  and  old  age. 
He  then  begins  to  think  of  how  all  this  vast  organization 


108  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

is  to  be  managed,  and  with  that  his  real  difficulties 
begin. 

Now  I  for  one  am  prepared  to  take  these  difficulties 
very  seriously,  as  the  latter  part  of  this  book  will  show.  I 
will  even  go  so  far  as  to  say  that,  to  my  mind,  the  con- 
temporary Socialist  controversialist  meets  all  this  sys- 
tem of  objections  far  too  cavalierly.  These  difficulties 
are  real  difficulties  for  the  convinced  Socialist  as  for  the 
inquirer;  they  open  up  problems  that  have  still  to  be 
solved  before  the  equipment  of  Socialism  is  complete. 
"How  will  you  Socialists  get  the  right  men  in  the  right 
place  for  the  work  that  has  to  be  done  ?  How  will  you 
arrange  promotion?  how  will  you  determine"  —  I  put 
the  argument  in  its  crudest  form  —  "  who  is  to  engage 
in  historical  research  in  the  Bodleian,  and  who  is  to  go 
out  seaward  in  November  and  catch  mackerel?"  Such 
"  posers  "  —  they  have  a  thousand  variants  —  convey  the 
spirit  of  the  living  resistance  to  Socialism ;  they  explain 
why  every  rational  man  is  not  an  enraptured  Socialist 
at  the  present  time. 

Throughout  the  rest  of  this  book  I  hope  that  the  reader 
will  be  able  to  see  growing  together  in  this  aspect  and 
then  in  that,  in  this  and  that  suggestion,  the  complex 
solution  of  this  complex  system  of  difficulties.  My  ob- 
ject in  raising  them  now  is  not  to  dispose  of  them,  but  to 
give  them  the  fullest  recognition  —  and  to  ask  the  stu- 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GAIN   AND  OF  SERVICE         109 

dent  to  read  on.  In  all  these  matters  the  world  is  im- 
perfect now,  and  it  will  still  be  imperfect  under  Socialism 
—  though,  I  firmly  believe,  with  an  infinitely  lesser  and 
altogether  nobler  imperfection. 

But  I  do  want  to  point  out  here  that  though  these  are 
reasonable  and,  to  all  undogmatic  men,  most  helpful 
criticisms  of  the  Socialist  design,  they  are  no  sort  of  jus- 
tification for  things  as  they  are.  All  the  difficulties  that 
the  ordinary  exposition  of  Socialism  seems  to  leave  un- 
solved are  at  least  equally  not  solved  now.  Only  rarely 
does  the  right  man  seem  to  struggle  to  his  place  of  ade- 
quate opportunity.  Men  and  women  get  their  chance 
in  various  ways:  some  of  implacable  temper  and  ver- 
satile gifts  thrust  themselves  to  the  position  they  need 
for  the  exercise  of  their  powers ;  others  display  an  aston- 
ishing facility  in  securing  honours  and  occasions  they  can 
then  only  waste ;  others  outside  their  specific  gift  are  the 
creatures  of  luck  or  the  victims  of  modesty,  tactlessness, 
or  incapacity.  Most  of  the  large  businesses  of  the  world 
now  are  in  the  hands  of  private  proprietors  and  man- 
aged either  directly  by  an  owner  or  by  directors  or 
managers  acting  for  directors.  The  quality  of  promo- 
tion or  the  recognition  of  capacity  varies  very  much  in 
these  great  concerns,  but  they  are,  on  the  whole,  probably 
inferior  to  the  public  services.  Even  where  the  ad- 
ministration is  keenest  it  must  be  remembered  it  is  not 


110  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

seeking  the  men  who  work  the  machine  best,  but  the 
men  who  can  work  it  cheapest  and  with  the  maximum 
of  profit.  It  is  pure  romancing  to  represent  the  ordinary 
business  magnate  as  being  in  perpetual  search  for  capac- 
ity among  the  members  of  his  staff.  He  wants  them 
to  get  along  and  not  make  trouble. 

Among  the  smaller  businesses  that  still,  I  suppose, 
constitute  the  bulk  of  the  world's  economic  body, 
capacity  is  enormously  hampered.  I  was  once  an  appren- 
tice in  a  chemist's  shop,  and  also  once  in  a  draper's,  — 
I  was  a  difficult  son  to  "  place  " ;  two  of  my  brothers  have 
been  shop  assistants,  and  so  I  am  still  able  to  talk  un- 
derstandingly  with  clerks  and  employees,  and  I  know  that 
in  all  that  world  all  sorts  of  minor  considerations  obstruct 
the  very  beginnings  of  efficient  selection.  Every  shop 
is  riddled  with  jealousies;  "sucking  up  to  the  gov'ner" 
is  the  universal  crime,  and  among  the  women  in  many 
callings  promotion  is  too  often  tainted  by  still  baser 
suspicions.  No  doubt  in  a  badly  criticised  public  ser- 
vice there  is  such  a  thing  as  "sucking  up  to"  the  head 
of  the  department,  but  at  its  worst  it  is  not  nearly  so 
bad  as  things  may  be  in  a  small  private  concern  under 
a  petty  autocrat. 

In  America  it  is  said  that  the  public  services  are  in- 
ferior in  personal  quality  to  the  staffs  of  the  great  private 
business   organizations.     My   own   impression   is   that, 


THE   SPIRIT  OF  GAIN  AND  OF  SERVICE         111 

considering  the  salaries  paid,  they  are,  so  far  as  Federal 
concerns  go,  immeasurably  superior.  In  state  and 
municipal  affairs,  American  conditions  offer  no  satisfac- 
tory criterion;  the  Americans  are,  for  reasons  I  have 
discussed  elsewhere,^  a  "state-blind"  people  concen- 
trated upon  private  getting;  they  have  been  negligent 
of  public  concerns,  and  the  public  appointments  have 
been  left  to  the  peculiarly  ruffianly  type  of  politician 
their  unfortunate  constitution  and  their  unfortunate 
traditions  have  evolved.  In  England,  too,  public  ser- 
vants are  systematically  undersalaried  so  that  the  big 
businesses  have  merely  to  pay  reasonably  well  to  secure 
the  pick  of  the  national  capacity.  Moreover,  it  must 
be  remembered  by  the  reader  that  the  public  services  do 
not  advertise,  and  that  the  private  businesses  do;  so 
that  while  there  is  the  fullest  ventilation  of  any  defects 
in  our  military  or  naval  organization,  there  is  a  very 
considerable  check  upon  the  discussion  of  individualist 
incapacity.  An  editor  will  rush  into  print  with  the  flim- 
siest imputations  upon  the  breach  of  the  new  field-gun 
or  the  housing  of  the  militia  at  Aldershot,  but  he  thinks 
twice  before  he  proclaims  that  the  preserved  fruits  that 
pay  his  proprietor  a  tribute  of  some  hundreds  a  year  are 
an  unwholesome  embalmment  of  decay.  On  the  whole, 
it  is  probable  that  in  spite  of  scandalously  bad  pay  and 

'  The  Future  in  America,  Ch.  IX.    (Chapman  and  Hall,  1906.) 


112  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

of  the  embarrassment  of  party  considerations,  the 
British  navy,  post-office,  and  civil  service  generally,  and 
the  educational  work  and  much  of  the  transit  and  build- 
ing work  of  the  London  County  Council  and  of  many  of 
the  greater  English  and  Scotch  municipalities,  are  as 
well  managed  as  any  private  businesses  in  the  world. 

On  the  other  hand  one  must  admit  there  are  political 
and  social  conditions  that  can  carry  the  quality  of  the 
state  service  almost  as  low  as  the  lowest  type  of  private 
enterprise.  It  is  little  marvel  that  under  the  typical 
eighteenth-century  monarchy  when  the  way  to  ship, 
regiment  and  the  apostolic  succession  alike  lay  through 
the  ante-chamber  of  the  king's  mistress,  there  was 
begotten  that  absolute  repudiation  of  state  control  to 
which  Herbert  Spencer  was  destined  at  last  to  give  the 
complete  expression,  that  irrational,  passionate  belief 
that  whatever  else  is  right  the  state  is  necessarily  in- 
competent and  wrong. 

The  gist  of  this  matter  seems  to  be  that  where  you  have 
honourable  political  institutions,  free  speech  and  a  gen- 
eral high  level  of  intelligence  and  education  you  will 
have  an  efficient  criticism  of  men  and  their  work  and 
powers,  and  you  will  get  a  wholesome  system  of  public 
promotion  and  many  right  men  in  the  right  place.  The 
higher  the  collective  intelligence,  that  is  to  say,  the  higher 
is  the  collective  possibility.     Under  Socialist  institutions 


THE   SPIRIT  OF  GAIN  AND  OF  SERVICE         113 

which  will  give  education  and  a  sense  of  personal  security 
to  every  one,  this  necessity  of  criticism  is  likely  to  be 
most  freely,  frankly  and  disinterestedly  provided.  But 
it  is  well  to  keep  in  mind  the  entire  dependence  of  So- 
cialism upon  a  high  level  of  intelligence,  education  and 
freedom.  Socialist  institutions,  as  I  understand  them, 
are  only  possible  in  a  civilized  state,  in  a  state  in  which 
the  whole  population  can  read,  write,  discuss,  participate, 
and  in  a  considerable  measure  understand.  Education 
must  precede  the  Socialist  state.  Socialism,  modern 
Socialism,  that  is  to  say,  such  as  I  am  now  concerned  with, 
is  essentially  an  exposition  of  and  training  in  certain  gen- 
eral ideas ;  it  is  impossible  in  an  illiterate  community,  a 
basely  selfish  community,  or  in  a  community  without  the 
capacity  to  use  the  machinery  and  the  apparatus  of 
civilization.  At  the  best,  and  it  is  a  poor  best,  a  stupid, 
illiterate  population  can  but  mock  Socialism  with  a  sort 
of  bureaucratic  tyranny;  for  a  barbaric  population,  too 
large  and  various  for  the  folk-meeting,  there  is  nothing 
but  monarchy  and  the  ownership  of  the  king ;  for  a  sav- 
age tribe,  tradition  and  the  undocumented  will  of  the 
strongest  males.  Socialism,  I  will  admit,  presupposes 
intelligence,  and  demands  as  fundamental  necessities, 
schools,  organized  science,  literature,  and  a  sense  of  the 
state. 


CHAPTER  VI 

WOULD   SOCIALISM   DESTROY  THE   HOME? 
§1 

For  reasons  that  will  become  clearer  when  we  tell 
something  of  the  early  history  and  development  of 
Socialism,  the  Socialist  propositions  with  regard  to  the 
family  lie  open  to  certain  grave  misconceptions.  People 
are  told  —  and  told  quite  honestly  and  believingly — that 
Socialism  will  destroy  the  home,  will  substitute  a  sort  of 
human  stud-farm  for  that  warm  and  intimate  nest  of 
human  life,  will  bring  up  our  children  in  incubators  and 
Creeches  and  —  institutions  generally. 

It  isn't  so. 

But  before  we  come  to  what  modern  Socialists  do  de- 
sire in  these  matters,  it  may  be  well  to  consider  some- 
thing of  the  present  reality  of  the  home  people  are  so 
concerned  about.  The  reader  must  not  idealize.  He 
must  not  shut  his  eyes  to  facts,  dream,  as  Lord  Hugh 
Cecil  and  Lord  Robert  Cecil  —  those  admirable  cham- 
pions of  a  bad  cause  —  probably  do,  of  a  beautiful 
world  of  homes,  orderly,  virtuous,  each  a  little  human 

114 


WOULD  SOCIALISM  DESTROY  THE   HOME?       115 

fastness,  each  with  its  porch  and  creeper,  each  with  its 
books  and  harmonium,  its  hymn-singing  on  Sunday 
night,  its  dear  mother  who  makes  such  wonderful  cakes, 
its  strong  and  happy  father  —  and  then  say,  "These 
wicked  Socialists  want  to  destroy  all  this."  Because  in 
the  first  place  such  homes  are  being  destroyed  and  made 
impossible  now  by  the  very  causes  against  which  So- 
cialism fights,  and  because  in  this  world  at  the  present 
time  very  few  homes  are  at  all  like  this  ideal.  In  reality 
every  poor  home  is  haunted  by  the  spectre  of  irregular 
employment  and  undermined  by  untrustworthy  insur- 
ance; it  must  shelter  in  insanitary  dwellings  and  its 
children  eat  adulterated  food  because  none  other  can  be 
got.  And  that,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  it  is  only  too  easy  to 
prove  —  by  a  second  appeal  to  a  document  of  which  I 
have  already  made  use. 

One  hears  at  times  still  of  the  austere,  virtuous,  kindly, 
poor  Scotch  home;  one  has  a  vision  of  the  "Cottar's 
Saturday  Night."  "Perish  all  other  dreams,"  one  cries, 
"rather  than  that  such  goodness  and  simplicity  should 
end."  But  now  let  us  look  at  the  average  poor  Scotch 
home,  and  compare  it  with  our  dream. 

Here  is  the  reality. 

These  entries  come  from  the  recently  published 
Edinburgh  Charity  Organization  Society's  report  upon 
the  homes  of  about  fourteen  hundred  school  children, 


116  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

that  is  to  say,  about  eight  hundred  Scotch  homes. 
Remember  they  are  sample  homes.  They  are,  as  I  have 
already  suggested  by  quoting  authorities  for  London  and 
York  —  and  as  any  district  visitor  will  recognize  —  little 
worse  and  little  better  than  the  bulk  of  poor  people's 
homes  in  Scotland  and  England  at  the  present  time.  I 
am  just  going  to  copy  down  —  not  a  selection,  mind, 
but  a  series  of  consecutive  entries  taken  haphazard 
from  this  implacable  list.  My  last  quotation  was  from 
cases  1,  2,  3,  and  so  on ;  I've  now  thrust  my  finger  among 
the  pages  and  come  upon  numbers  191  and  192,  etc. 
Here  they  are,  one  after  the  other,  just  as  they  come  in 
the  list :  — 

19L  A  widow  and  child  lodging  with  a  married  son.  Three 
grown-up  people  and  three  children  occupy  one  room  and  bed- 
closet.  The  widow  leads  a  wandering  life  and  is  intemperate. 
The  house  is  thoroughly  bad  and  insanitary.  The  child  is  pallid 
and  delicate  looking  and  receives  little  attention,  for  the  mother 
is  usually  out  working.  He  plays  in  the  streets.  Five  children 
are  dead.  Boy  has  glands  and  is  fieabitten.  Evidence  from 
Police,  School  Officer,  and  Employer. 

192.  A  miserable  home.  Father  dead.  Mother  and  eldest 
son  careless  and  indifferent.  Of  the  five  children,  the  two  eldest 
are  grown  up.  The  elder  girl  is  working,  and  she  is  of  a  better 
type  and  might  do  well  under  better  circumstances;  she  looks 
overworked.  The  mother  is  supposed  to  char;  she  gets  parish 
relief,  and  one  child  earns  out  of  school  hours.  Four  children  are 
dead.  The  children  at  school  are  dirty  and  ragged.  The  mother 
could  work  if  she  did  not  drink.    The  children  at  school  get  free 


WOULD   SOCIALISM  DESTROY  THE  HOME?       117 

dinners  and  clothing,  and  the  family  is  favourably  reported  on 
by  the  church.  The  second  child,  impetigo ;  neck  glands ;  body 
dirty;  the  third,  glands;  dirty  and  fleabitten.  Housing:  six 
in  two  small  rooms.  Evidence  from  Parish  Sister,  Parish  Coun- 
cil, School  Charity,  Police,  Teacher,  Children's  Employment,  and 
School  Officer. 

193.  A  widow,  apparently  respectable  and  well-doing,  but 
may  drink.  She  must  in  any  case  have  a  struggle  to  maintain 
her  family,  though  she  has  much  help  from  Parish,  Church,  etc. 
She  works  out.  The  children  at  school  are  fed,  and  all  together  a 
large  amount  of  charity  must  be  received  as  two  churches  have 
interested  themselves  in  the  matter.  Three  children  dead. 
Housing :  three  in  two  tiny  rooms.  Evidence  from  Church, 
Parish  Council,  School  Charity,  Police,  Parish  Sister,  Teacher, 
Insurance,  and  Factor. 

194.  The  father  drinks,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  the  mother ; 
but  the  home  is  tidy  and  clean,  and  the  rent  is  regularly  paid. 
Indeed,  there  is  no  sign  of  poverty.  There  is  a  daughter  who 
has  got  into  trouble.  Only  two  children  out  of  nine  are  alive. 
The  father  comes  from  the  country  and  seems  intelligent  enough, 
but  he  appears  to  have  degenerated.  They  go  to  a  mission,  it  is 
believed,  for  what  they  can  get  from  it.  Housing :  four  in  two 
rooms.     Evidence  from  Club,  Church,  Factor,  and  Pohce. 

195.  The  husband  is  intemperate.  The  mother  is  quiet,  but 
it  is  feared  that  she  drinks  also.  She  seems  to  have  lost  control 
of  her  little  boy  of  seven.  The  parents  married  very  young, 
and  the  first  child  was  born  before  the  marriage.  The  man's 
work  is  not  regular,  and  probably  things  are  not  improving  with 
him.  Still,  the  house  is  fairly  comfortable,  and  they  pay  Club 
money  regularly,  and  have  a  good  police  report.  One  child  has 
died.  Housing :  five  in  two  rooms.  Evidence  from  Parish 
Sister,  Police,  Club,  Employer,  Schoolmistress,  and  Factor. 


118  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

196.  A  filthy,  dirty  house.  The  most  elementary  notions  of 
cleanliness  seem  disregarded.  The  father's  earnings  are  not 
large,  and  the  house  is  insanitary,  but  more  might  be  made  of 
things  if  there  were  sobriety  and  thrift.  There  does  not,  however, 
appear  to  be  great  drunkenness,  and  five  small  children  must  be 
difficult  to  bring  up  on  the  money  coming  in.  There  are  two 
women  in  the  house.  The  eldest  child  dirty  and  fleabitten. 
Housing:  seven  in  two  rooms.  Evidence  from  Police,  Club, 
Employer,  Schoolmistress,  and  School  Officer, 

197.  The  parents  are  thoroughly  drunken  and  dissolute. 
They  have  sunk  almost  to  the  lowest  depths  of  social  degrada- 
tion. There  is  no  furniture  in  the  house,  and  the  five  children 
are  neglected  and  starved.  One  boy  earns  a  trifle  out  of  school 
hours.  All  accounts  agree  as  to  the  character  of  the  father  and 
mother,  though  they  have  not  been  in  the  hands  of  the  police. 
Second  child  has  ricketts,  bronchitis,  slight  glands,  and  is  bow- 
legged.  Two  children  have  died.  Housing :  seven  in  two 
rooms.  Evidence  from  Police,  Parish  Sister,  Employer,  and 
Schoolmistress. 

198.  This  house  is  fairly  comfortable,  and  there  is  no  evi- 
dence of  drink,  but  the  surroundings  have  a  bad  and  depressing 
effect  on  the  parents.  The  children  are  sent  to  school  very 
untidy  and  dirty,  and  are  certainly  underfed.  The  father's 
wages  are  very  small,  and  only  one  boy  is  working;  there 
are  six  all  together.  The  mother  chars  occasionally.  Food  and 
clothing  is  given  to  school  children.  The  man  is  in  a  saving  club. 
The  eldest  child  fleabitten;  body  unwashed.  The  second, 
glands;  fleabitten  and  dirty;  cretinoid;  much  undergrown. 
Two  have  died.  Housing :  seven  in  two  rooms.  Evidence  from 
School  Charity,  Factor,  Police,  and  Schoolmistress. 

199.  The  house  was  fairly  comfortable,  and  the  man  appeared 
to  be  intelligent  and  the  wife  hardworking,  but  the  police  re- 
ports are  very  bad;   there  are  several  convictions  against  the 


WOULD  SOCIALISM   DESTROY  THE  HOME?      119 

former.  He  has  consequently  been  idle,  and  the  burden  of  the 
family  has  rested  on  the  wife.  There  are  six  children,  two  of 
them  are  working  and  earning  a  little,  but  a  large  amount  of  char- 
ity from  school,  church,  and  private  generosity  keeps  the  family 
going.  The  children  are  fearfully  verminous.  There  is  a  sug- 
gestion that  some  baby  farming  is  done,  so  many  are  about. 
Eldest  child,  anaemic ;  glands ;  head  badly  crusted ;  lice  very 
bad.  Second  child,  numerous  glands ;  head  covered  with  crusts ; 
lice,  very  bad.  Four  have  died.  Housing :  eight  in  two  rooms 
Evidence  from  Police,  Teacher,  Church  Parish  Sister,  and  Factor. 
200.  The  home  is  wretched  and  practically  without  furniture. 
The  parents  were  married  at  ages  17  and  18.  One  child  died  and 
their  mode  of  life  has  been  reckless,  if  not  worse.  The  present 
means  of  subsistence  cannot  be  ascertained  as  the  man  is  idle; 
however  he  recently  joined  the  Salvation  Army  and  signed  the 
pledge.  The  child  at  school  is  helped  with  food  and  clothes. 
The  girl  very  badly  bitten;  lice  and  fleas,  hair  nits.  Housing: 
four  in  one  room.  Evidence  from  Church,  School  Charity, 
Cooperative,  Employer,  Parish  Sister,  PoUce,  and  Schoolmis- 
tress. 

Total  of  children  still  living,  39. 

Total  of  children  dead,  27. 

Need  I  go  on  ?  They  are  all  after  this  fashion,  800  of 
them. 

And  if  you  turn  from  the  congested  town  to  the 
wholesome,  simple  country,  here  is  the  sort  of  home  you 
have  going  on.  This  passage  is  a  cutting  from  the  Daily 
News  of  January  1,  1907,  and  its  assertions  have  never 
been  contradicted.     It  fills  one  with  only  the  mildest 


120  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

enthusiasm  for  the  return  of  our  degenerate  townsmen 
"back  to  the  land."  I  came  upon  it  as  I  read  that 
morning's  paper  after  drafting  this  chapter. 

"Our  attention  has  been  called  to  a  sordid  Herefordshire 
tragedy  recently  revealed  at  an  inquest  on  a  child  aged  one  year 
and  nine  months,  who  died  in  Weobly  Workhouse  of  pneumonia. 
She  entered  the  institution  emaciated  to  half  the  proper  weight 
of  her  age  and  with  a  broken  arm  —  till  then  undiscovered  — 
that  the  doctors  found  to  be  of  about  three  weeks'  standing. 
Her  mother  was  shown  to  be  in  an  advanced  stage  of  consump- 
tion ;  one  child  had  died  at  the  age  of  seven  months,  and  seven 
now  remain.  The  father,  whose  work  consists  in  tending  eighty- 
nine  head  of  cattle  and  ten  pigs,  is  in  receipt  of  eleven  shillings 
a  week,  three  pints  of  skim  milk  a  day,  and  a  cottage  that  has 
been  condemned  by  the  sanitary  inspector  and  described  as  having 
no  bedroom  windows.  We  are  not  surprised  to  learn  that  the 
coroner  before  taking  the  verdict  asked  the  house  surgeon  who 
gave  evidence,  whether  he  could  say  that  death  '  was  accelerated 
by  anything.'  Our  wonder  is  that  the  reply  was  in  the  negative. 
The  cottage  is  in  the  possession  of  the  farmer  who  employs  the 
man,  but  his  landlord  is  said  to  be  liable  for  repairs.  That  land- 
lord is  a  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England,  a  J. P.,  a  preserver 
of  game,  and  owner  of  three  or  four  thousand  acres  of  land." 

And  here,  again,  in  the  Times,  by  no  means  a  Sociahst 
organ,  generalizing  from  official  statements :  — 

"  Houses  unfit  for  human  habitation,  rooms  destitute  of  light 
and  ventilation,  overcrowding  in  rural  cottages,  contaminated 
water  supplies,  accumulations  of  every  description  of  filth  and 
refuse,  a  total  absence  of  drainage,  a  reign  of  unbelievable  dirt  in 
milk  shops  and  slaughter  houses,  a  total  neglect  of  by-laws,  and 


WOULD  SOCIALISM  DESTROY   THE   HOME?       121 

an  inadequate  supervision  by  officials  who  are  frequently  incom- 
petent; such,  in  a  general  way,  is  the  picture  that  is  commonly 
presented  —  in  the  reports  of  inquiries  in  certain  rural  districts 
made  by  medical  officers  of  the  Local  Government  Board." 

And  even  of  such  homes  as  this  there  is  an  insuffi- 
ciency. In  1891-1895  more  than  a  quarter  of  the 
deaths  in  London  occurred  in  workhouses  and  other 
charitable  institutions.*  Now,  suppose  the  modern  So- 
cialist did  want  to  destroy  the  home ;  suppose  that  some 
Socialists  have  in  the  past  really  wanted  to  do  so,  re- 
member that  that  is  the  reality  they  wanted  to  destroy. 

But  does  the  modern  Socialist  want  to  destroy  the 
home  ?  Rather,  I  hold  he  wants  to  save  it  from  a  de- 
struction that  is  even  now  going  on,  to  —  I  won't  say 
restore  it,  because  I  have  very  grave  doubts  if  the  world 
has  ever  yet  held  a  high  percentage  of  good  homes  — 
but  raise  it  to  the  level  of  its  better  realizations  of  happi- 
ness and  security.  And  it  is  not  only  I  say  this  but  all 
my  fellow-Socialists  say  it,  too.  Read,  for  example,  that 
admirable  paper  ''Economic  and  Social  Justice"  in  Dr. 
Alfred  Russel  Wallace's  Studies,  Scientific  and  Social,  and 
you  will  have  the  clearest  statement  of  the  attitude  of 
a  representative  modem  Socialist  to  this  question. 

»  Studies,  Scientific  and  Social,  VoL  II,  Ch.  XXIV,  by  Dr.  Alfred 
Russel  Wallace.     (Macmillan  and  Co.  1900.) 


122  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 


§2 


The  reader  must  get  quite  out  of  his  head  the  idea  that 
the  present  system  maintains  the  home  and  social  purity. 

In  London  at  the  present  time  there  are  thousands  of 
prostitutes;  in  Paris,  in  Berhn,  in  every  great  city  of 
Europe  or  America,  thousands ;  in  the  whole  of  Christen- 
dom there  cannot  be  less  than  a  million  of  these  ultimate 
instances  of  our  civilization.  They  are  the  logical  ex- 
tremity of  a  civilization  based  on  cash  payments.  Each 
of  these  women  represents  a  smashed  and  ruined  home 
and  wasted  possibilities  of  honour,  service  and  love, 
each  one  is  so  much  sheer  waste.  For  the  food  they 
consume,  their  clothing,  their  lodging,  they  render  back 
nothing  to  the  community  as  a  whole,  and  only  a  gross, 
dishonouring  satisfaction  to  their  casual  employers. 
And  don't  imagine  they  are  inferior  women,  that  there 
has  been  any  selection  of  the  unfit  in  their  sterihzation; 
they  are,  one  may  see  for  oneself,  well  above  the  average 
in  physical  vigour,  in  spirit  and  beauty.  Few  of  them 
have  come  freely  to  their  trade,  the  most  unnatural  in 
the  world;  few  of  them  have  anything  but  shame  and 
loathing  for  their  life;  and  most  of  them  must  needs 
face  their  calling  fortified  by  drink  and  drugs.  For  vir- 
tuous people  do  not  begin  to  understand  the  things  they 
endure.     But  it  pays  to  be  a  prostitute,  it  does  not  pay 


WOULD   SOCIALISM   DESTROY  THE   HOME?      123 

to  be  a  mother  and  a  home  maker,  and  the  gist  of  the 
present  system  of  individual  property  is  that  a  thing 
must  pay  to  exist.  So  much  for  one  aspect  of  our 
present  system  of  a  "world  of  homes." 

Consider  next  the  great  army  of  employed  men  and 
women,  shop  assistants,  clerks,  and  so  forth,  living  in, 
milliners,  typists,  teachers,  servants  who  have  prac- 
tically no  prospect  whatever  of  marrying  and  experienc- 
ing those  domestic  blisses  the  Socialist  is  supposed  to 
want  to  rob  them  of.  They  are  involuntary  monks  and 
nuns,  celibate  not  from  any  high  or  religious  motive,  but 
through  economic  hardship.  Consider  all  that  amount 
of  pent-up,  thwarted,  or  perverted  emotional  possibility, 
the  sheer  irrational  waste  of  life  implied. 

We  have  glanced  at  the  reality  of  the  family  among  the 
poor;  what  is  it  among  the  rich?  Does  the  wealthy 
mother  of  the  upper  middle  class  or  upper  class  really 
sit  among  her  teeming  children,  teaching  them  in  an  at- 
mosphere of  love  and  domestic  exaltation  ?  As  a  matter 
of  fact  she  is  a  conspicuously  devoted  woman  if  she  gives 
them  an  hour  a  day  of  her  time ;  the  rest  of  the  time  they 
spend  with  nurse  or  governess,  and  when  they  are  ten  or 
eleven  off  they  go  to  board  at  the  preparatory  school. 
Whenever  I  find  among  my  press-cuttings  some  par- 
ticularly scathing  denunciation  of  Socialists  as  home- 
destroyers,  as  people  who  want  to  snatch  the  tender  child 


124  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

from  the  weeping  mother  to  immure  it  in  some  terrible 
wholesale  institution,  I  am  apt  to  walk  out  into  my  gar- 
den, from  which  three  boarding-schools  for  little  children 
of  the  prosperous  classes  are  visible,  and  rub  my  eyes 
and  renew  that  sight  and  marvel  at  my  kind. 

Consider  now,  with  these  things  in  mind,  the  real  drift 
of  the  first  main  Socialist  proposition,  and  compare  its 
tendency  with  these  contemporary  conditions.  Social- 
ism regards  parentage  under  proper  safeguards  and  good 
auspices,  as  "not  only  a  duty  but  a  service"  to  the  state; 
that  is  to  say,  it  proposes  to  pay  for  good  parentage — in 
other  words,  to  endow  the  home,  Sociahsm  comes  not  to 
destroy  but  to  save. 

And  how  will  the  endowment  be  done?  Very  prob- 
ably it  will  be  found  that  the  most  convenient  and  best 
method  of  doing  this  will  be  to  pay  the  mother  —  who  is 
or  should  be  the  principal  person  concerned  in  this  affair 
—  for  her  children ;  to  assist  her,  not  as  a  charity,  but  as 
a  right  in  the  period  before  the  birth  of  her  anticipated 
child,  and  afterwards  to  pay  for  that  child  so  long  as  it  is 
kept  clean  in  a  tolerable  home,  in  good  health,  well 
taught,  and  properly  clad.  Frankly  it  will  say  to  the 
sound  mothering  women,  not  typewriting,  nor  shirt- 
sewing,  nor  charring  is  your  business,  these  children  are. 
Neglect  them,  iU-treat  them,  prove  incompetent,  and 
your  pay  will  cease,  and  we  shall  take  them  away  from 


WOULD  SOCIALISM  DESTROY  THE  HOME?      125 

you  and  do  what  we  can  for  them;  love  them,  serve 
them,  and,  through  them,  the  state,  and  you  will  serve 
yourself.  Is  that  destroying  the  home?  Is  it  not 
rather  the  rescue  of  the  home  from  economic  destruction  ? 
Certain  restrictions,  it  is  true,  upon  our  present  way  of 
doing  things  would  follow  almost  necessarily  from  the 
adoption  of  these  methods.  It  is  manifest  that  no  in- 
telligent state  would  willingly  endow  the  homes  of  hope- 
lessly diseased  parents,  of  imbecile  fathers  or  mothers,  of 
obstinately  criminal  persons  or  people  incapable  of  edu- 
cation. It  is  evident,  too,  that  the  state  would  not 
tolerate  chance  fatherhood,  that  it  would  insist  very 
emphatically  upon  marriage  and  the  purity  of  the  home, 
much  more  emphatically  than  we  do  now.  Such  a  case 
as  the  one  numbered  197,  a  beautiful  instance  of  the 
sweet,  old-fashioned,  homely,  simple  hfe  of  the  poor  we 
Socialists  are  supposed  to  be  vainly  endeavouring  to 
undermine,  would  certainly  be  dealt  with  in  a  drastic  and 
conclusive  spirit. 

§3 

So  far  Socialism  goes  toward  regenerating  the  family 
and  sustaining  the  home.  But  let  there  be  no  ambiguity 
on  one  point.  It  will  be  manifest  that  while  it  would 
reinvigorate  and  confirm  the  home,  it  does  quite  decidedly 
tend  to  destroy  what  has  hitherto  been  the  most  typical 


126  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

form  of  the  family  throughout  the  world,  that  is  to  say, 
the  family  which  is  in  effect  the  private  property  of  the 
father,  the  patriarchal  family.  The  tradition  of  the 
family  in  which  we  are  still  living,  we  must  remember, 
has  developed  from  a  former  state  in  which  man  owned 
the  wife  and  child  as  completely  as  he  owned  horse  or  hut. 
He  was  its  irresponsible  owner.  Socialism  seeks  to 
make  him  and  his  wife  its  jointly  responsible  heads. 
Until  quite  recently  the  husband  might  beat  his  wife  and 
put  all  sorts  of  physical  constraint  upon  her;  he  might 
starve  her  or  turn  her  out  of  doors ;  her  property  was  his ; 
her  earnings  were  his;  her  children  were  his.  Under 
certain  circumstances  it  was  generally  recognized  he 
might  kill  her.  To-day  we  live  in  a  world  that  has  fal- 
tered from  the  rigours  of  this  position,  but  which  still 
clings  to  its  sentimental  consequences.  The  wife  nowa- 
days is  a  sort  of  pampered  and  protected  half-property. 
If  she  leaves  her  husband  for  another  man,  it  is  regarded 
not  as  a  public  offence  on  her  part,  but  as  a  sort  of  miti- 
gated theft  on  the  part  of  the  latter,  entitling  the  former 
to  damages.  Politically  she  doesn't  exist;  the  husband 
sees  to  all  that.  But  on  the  other  hand,  he  mustn't  drive 
her  by  physical  force,  but  only  by  the  moral  pressure  of 
disagreeable  behaviour.  Nor  has  he  the  same  large 
powers  of  violence  over  her  children  that  once  he  had. 
He  may  beat  —  within  limits.     He  may  dictate  their  edu- 


WOULD  SOCIALISM  DESTROY  THE  HOME?      127 

cation  so  far  as  his  religious  eccentricities  go,  and  be  gen- 
erous or  meagre  with  the  supplies.  He  may  use  his 
"  authority  "  as  a  vague  power  far  on  into  their  adult  life, 
if  he  is  a  forcible  character.  But  it  is  at  its  best  a  shorn 
splendour  he  retains.  He  has  ceased  to  be  an  autocrat 
and  become  a  constitutional  monarch;  the  state,  sus- 
tained by  the  growing  reasonableness  of  the  world,  in- 
tervenes more  and  more  between  him  and  the  wife  and 
children  who  were  once  powerless  in  his  hands. 

The  Socialist  would  end  that  old  predominance  alto- 
gether. The  woman,  he  declares,  must  be  as  important 
and  responsible  a  citizen  in  the  state  as  the  man.  She 
must  cease  to  be  in  any  sense  or  degree  private  property. 
The  man  must  desist  from  tyrannizing  in  the  nursery 
and  do  his  proper  work  in  the  world.  So  far,  therefore, 
as  the  family  is  a  name  for  private  property  in  a  group  of 
related  human  beings  vesting  in  one  of  them,  the  head 
of  the  family.  Socialism  repudiates  it  altogether  as  un- 
just and  uncivilized;  but  so  far  as  the  family  is  a  group- 
ing of  children  with  their  parents,  in  love  and  respect  and 
mutual  help,  with  the  support  and  consent  and  approval 
of  the  whole  community.  Socialism  advocates  it,  would 
make  it  for  the  first  time,  so  far  as  a  very  large  moiety 
of  our  population  is  concerned,  a  possible  and  efficient 
thing. 

Moreover,  as  the  present  writer  has  pointed  out  else- 


128  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

where/  this  putting  of  the  home  upon  a  public  basis  de- 
stroys its  autonomy.  Just  as  the  Socialist  and  all  who 
have  the  cause  of  civihzation  at  heart,  would  substitute 
for  the  inefficient,  wasteful,  irresponsible,  unqualified 
"private  adventure  school"  that  did  such  infinite  injury 
to  middle  class  education  in  Great  Britain  during  the 
Victorian  period,  a  public  school,  publicly  and  richly 
endowed  and  responsible  and  controlled,  so  the  Socialist 
would  put  an  end  to  the  uncivilized  go-as-you-please  of 
the  private  adventure  family,  "Socialism,  in  fact,  is  the 
state  family.  The  old  family  of  the  private  individual 
must  vanish  before  it  just  as  the  old  water  works  of  pri- 
vate enterprise  or  the  old  gas  company."  ^  To  any  one 
not  idiotic  nor  blind  with  a  passionate  desire  to  lie  about 
Socialism,  the  meaning  of  this  passage  is  perfectly  plain. 
Socialism  seeks  to  broaden  the  basis  of  the  family  and  to 
make  the  once  irresponsible  parent  responsible  to  the 
state  for  its  welfare;  Socialism  creates  parental  respon- 
sibility. 

§4 

And  here  we  may  give  a  few  words  to  certain  questions 
that  are  in  reality  outside  the  scope  of  Socialists  al- 
together, special  questions  involving  the  most  subtle 
ethical  and  psychological  decisions.     Upon  them  So- 

*  Socialism  and  the  Family.     (A.  C.  Fifield.     6d.) 


WOULD  SOCIALISM   DESTROY  THE   HOME?      129 

cialists  are  as  widely  divergent  as  people  who  are  not 
Socialists,  and  Socialism  as  a  whole  presents  nothing  but 
an  open  mind.  They  are  questions  that  would  be  equally 
open  to  discussion  in  relation  to  an  Individualist  state  or 
to  any  sort  of  state.  Certain  religious  organizations  have 
given  clear  and  imperative  answers  to  some  or  all  of  these 
questions,  and  so  far  as  the  reader  is  a  member  of  such  an 
organization  he  may  rest  assured  that  Socialism,  as  an 
authoritative  whole,  has  nothing  to  say  for  or  against  his 
convictions.  This  cannot  be  made  too  plain  by  Social- 
ists, nor  too  frequently  repeated  by  them.  A  very  large 
part  of  the  so-called  arguments  against  them  arise  out  of 
deliberate  misrepresentations  and  misconceptions  of  some 
alleged  Socialist  position  in  these  indifferent  matters. 

I  refer  more  particularly  to  the  numerous  problems  in 
private  morality  and  social  organization  arising  from 
sexual  conduct.  May  a  man  love  one  woman  only  in 
his  life,  or  more,  and  may  a  woman  love  only  one  man  ? 
Should  marriage  be  an  irrevocable  life  union  or  not  ?  Is 
sterile  physical  love  possible,  permissible,  moral,  honour- 
able, or  intolerable  ?  Upon  all  these  matters  individual 
Socialists,  hke  most  other  people,  have  their  doubts  and 
convictions,  but  it  is  no  more  just  to  saddle  all  Socialism 
with  their  private  utterances  and  actions  upon  these 
issues  than  it  would  be  to  declare  that  the  Roman 
Catholic  Communion  is  hostile  to  beauty  because  wor- 


130  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

shippers  coming  and  going  have  knocked  the  noses  off 
the  figures  on  the  bronze  doors  of  the  church  of  San 
Zeno  at  Verona,  or  that  Christianity  involves  the  cul- 
tivation of  private  vermin,  because  of  the  condition  of 
Saint  Thomas  a  Becket's  hair  shirt. ^  To  argue  in  that 
way  is  to  give  up  one's  birthright  as  a  reasonable  being. 
Upon  certain  points  modern  Socialism  is  emphatic; 
women  and  children  must  not  be  dealt  with  as  private 
property;  women  must  be  citizens  equally  with  men; 
children  must  not  be  casually  born;  their  parents  must 
be  known  and  worthy,  that  is  to  say,  there  must  be  delib- 
eration in  begetting  children,  marriage  under  conditions. 
And  there  Socialism  stops. 

1  "  The  haircloth  encased  the  whole  body  down  to  the  knees ;  the 
hair  drawers  as  well  as  the  rest  of  the  dress  being  covered  on  the 
outside  with  white  linen  so  as  to  escape  observation ;  and  the  whole 
so  fastened  together  as  to  admit  of  being  readily  taken  off  for  his 
daily  scourgings,  of  which  yesterday's  portion  was  still  apparent  in 
the  stripes  on  his  body.  Such  austerity  had  hitherto  been  un- 
known to  English  saints,  and  the  marvel  was  increased  by  the  sight 
—  to  our  notions  so  revolting  —  of  the  innumerable  vermin  with 
which  the  haircloth  abounded,  boiling  over  with  them,  as  one 
account  describes  it,  like  water  in  a  simmering  cauldron.  At  the 
dreadful  sight  all  the  enthusiasm  of  the  previous  night  revived 
with  double  ardour.  They  looked  at  each  other  in  silent  wonder, 
then  exclaimed, '  See,  see  what  a  true  monk  he  was,  and  we  knew  it 
not !'  and  burst  into  alternate  fits  of  weeping  and  laughter,  between 
the  sorrow  of  having  lost  such  a  head,  and  the  joy  of  having  found 
such  a  saint."  —  Historical  Memorials  of  Canterbury,  by  the  Rev. 
Arthur  Penryn  Stanley,  D.D. 


WOULD  SOCIALISM   DESTROY  THE   HOME?      131 

Socialism  has  not  even  worked  out  what  are  the  reason- 
able conditions  of  a  state  marriage  contract,  and  it  would 
be  ridiculous  to  pretend  it  had.  This  is  not  a  defect  in 
Socialism  particularly,  but  a  defect  in  human  knowledge. 
At  countless  points  in  the  tangle  of  questions  involved, 
the  facts  are  not  clearly  known.  Socialism  does  not 
present  any  theory  whatever  about  the  duration  of 
marriage,  whether,  as  among  the  Roman  Catholics,  it 
should  be  absolutely  for  life,  or,  as  some  hold,  forever, 
or  as  among  the  various  divorce-permitting  Protestant 
bodies,  until  this  or  that  eventuality,  or,  even  as  Mr. 
George  Meredith  suggested  some  years  ago,  for  a  term  of 
ten  years.  In  these  matters  Socialism  does  not  decide, 
and  it  is  quite  reasonable  to  argue  that  Socialism  need 
not  decide.  The  state  is  not  urgently  concerned  with 
these  questions.  So  long  as  a  marriage  contract  provides 
for  the  health  and  sanity  of  the  contracting  parties,  and 
for  their  proper  behaviour  so  far  as  their  offspring  is 
concerned,  and  for  so  long  as  their  offspring  need  it,  the 
demands  of  the  community,  as  the  guardian  of  the  chil- 
dren, are  satisfied.  That  certainly  would  be  the  mini- 
mum marriage,  the  state  marriage,  and  I,  for  my  own 
part,  would  exact  nothing  more  in  the  legal  contract.  But 
a  number  of  more  representative  Socialists  than  I  are  for 
a  legally  compulsory  life  marriage.  Some  —  but  they 
are  mostly  of  the  older,  less  definite,  Sociahst  teaching  — 


132  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

are  for  a  looser  tie.  Let  us  clearly  understand  that  we 
are  here  talking  of  the  legal  marriage  only  —  the  state's 
share.  What  was  needed  more  than  that  minimum 
would  be  provided,  I  believe,  —  always  has  been  pro- 
vided hitherto,  even  to  excess,  —  by  custom,  religion, 
social  influence,  public  opinion. 

For  it  may  not  be  altogether  superfluous  to  remind 
the  reader  how  little  of  our  present  moral  code  is  ruled  by 
law.  We  have  in  England,  it  is  true,  certain  laws  pre- 
scribing the  conditions  of  the  marriage  contract,  penal- 
ties of  a  quite  ferocious  kind  to  prevent  bigamy,  and  a 
few  quite  trivial  disabilities  put  upon  those  illegitimately 
born.  But  there  is  no  legal  compulsion  upon  any  one  to 
marry  now,  and  far  less  legal  restriction  upon  irregular 
and  careless  parentage  than  would  be  put  in  any  scientifi- 
cally organized  Socialism.  Do  let  us  get  it  out  of  our 
heads  that  monogamy  is  enforced  by  law  at  the  present 
time.  It  is  not.  You  are  only  forbidden  to  enter  into 
normal  marriage  with  more  than  one  person.  If  a  man 
of  means  chooses  to  have  as  many  concubines  as  King 
Solomon  and  live  with  them  all  openly,  the  law  (I  am 
speaking  of  Great  Britain)  will  do  nothing  to  prevent  him. 
If  he  chooses  to  go  through  any  sort  of  nuptial  ceremony, 
provided  it  does  not  simulate  a  legal  marriage,  with 
some  or  all  of  them,  he  may.  And  to  any  one  who  evades 
the  legal  marriage  bond,  there  is  a  vast  range  of  betrayal 


WOULD  SOCIALISM   DESTROY  THE   HOME?      133 

and  baseness  as  open  as  anything  can  be.  The  real  con- 
trolhng  force  in  these  matters  is  social  influence,  pubhc 
opinion,  a  sort  of  conscience  and  feeling  for  the  judg- 
ment of  others  that  is  part  of  the  normal  human  equip- 
ment. And  the  same  motives  and  considerations  that 
keep  people's  lives  pure  and  discreet  now  will  be  all  the 
more  freely  in  operation  under  Socialism,  when  money 
will  count  for  less  and  reputation  for  more  than  they  do 
now.  Modern  Socialism  is  a  project  to  change  the  or- 
ganization of  living  and  the  circle  of  human  ideas  —  but 
it  is  no  sort  of  scheme  to  attempt  the  impossible,  to 
change  human  nature  and  to  destroy  the  social  sensitive- 
ness of  man, 

I  do  not  deny  the  intense  human  interest  of  these  open 
questions,  the  imperative  need  there  is  to  get  the  truth, 
whether  it  be  one's  own  truth  or  the  universal  truth, 
upon  them.  But  my  point  is  that  they  are  to  be  dis- 
cussed apart  from  Socialist  theory.  It  is  no  doubt  in- 
teresting to  discuss  the  benefits  of  vaccination  and  the 
justice  and  policy  of  its  public  compulsion,  to  debate 
whether  one  should  eat  meat  or  confine  oneself  to  a  vege- 
table dietary,  whether  the  overhead  or  the  slot  system  is 
preferable  for  tramway  traction,  whether  steamboats  are 
needed  on  the  Thames  in  winter,  and  whether  it  is  wiser 
to  use  metal  or  paper  for  money;  but  none  of  these 
things  have  anything  to  do  with  the  principles  of  So- 


134  NEW  WORLDS   FOR   OLD 

cialism.  Nor  need  we  decide  whether  Whistler,  Raphael, 
or  Carpaccio  has  left  us  the  most  satisfying  beauty,  or 
which  was  the  greater  musician,  Wagner,  Scarlatti,  or 
Beethoven,  nor  pronounce  on  the  Bacon-Shakespeare 
controversy  in  any  prescribed  way,  because  we  accept 
Socialism. 

Coming  to  graver  matters  there  are  ardent  theologians 
who  would  create  an  absolute  antagonism  between  So- 
cialism and  Christianity,  who  would  tie  up  Socialism  with 
some  extraordinary  doctrine  of  Predestination,  or  deny 
the  possibility  of  a  Christian  being  a  Socialist  or  a  Socialist 
being  a  Christian.  But  these  are  matters  on  different 
planes.  In  a  sense  Socialism  is  a  religion,  to  me  it  is  a 
religion,  in  the  sense,  that  is,  that  it  gives  a  work  to  do 
that  is  not  self-seeking,  that  it  determines  one  in  a 
thousand  indecisions,  that  it  supplies  that  imperative 
craving  of  so  many  human  souls,  a  devotion.  But  I  do 
not  see  why  a  believer  in  any  of  the  accepted  creeds  of 
Christianity,  from  the  Apostles'  Creed  upward,  should 
not  also  whole-heartedly  give  himself  to  this  great  work 
of  social  reconstruction.  To  believe  in  a  real  and  per- 
sonal heaven  is  sui'ely  not  to  deny  earth  with  its  tragedy, 
its  sorrows,  its  splendid  possibilities.  It  is  simply  to 
believe  a  little  more  concretely  than  I  do,  that  is  all.  To 
assert  the  brotherhood  of  man  under  God  seems  to  me  to 
lead  logically  to  a  repudiation  of  the  severities  of  private 


WOULD  SOCIALISM  DESTROY   THE  HOME?         135 

ownership — that  is,  to  Socialism.  When  the  rich  young 
man  was  told  to  give  up  his  property  to  follow  Christ, 
when  the  disciples  were  told  to  leave  father  and  mother 
—  it  seems  to  me  ridiculous  to  present  Christianity  as 
opposed  to  the  self-abnegation  of  the  two  main  general- 
izations of  Socialism,  —  that  relating  to  property  in 
things,  and  that  relating  to  property  in  persons.  It  is 
true  that  the  Church  of  Rome  has  taken  the  deplorable 
step  of  forbidding  Socialism  (or  at  least  Socialismus)  to 
its  adherents;  but  there  is  no  need  for  Socialists  to 
commit  a  reciprocal  stupidity.  Let  us  Socialists  at  any 
rate  keep  our  intellectual  partitions  up.  The  church  that 
now  quarrels  with  Socialism  once  quarrelled  with  as- 
tronomy and  geology,  and  astronomers  and  geologists 
went  on  with  their  own  business.  Both  religion  and  as- 
tronomy are  still  alive  and  in  the  same  world  together. 
And  the  Vatican  observatory,  by  the  bye,  is  honourably 
distinguished  for  its  excellent  stellar  photographs.  Per- 
haps, after  all,  the  church  does  not  mean  by  Socialismus 
Socialism  as  it  is  understood  in  English;  perhaps  it 
simply  means  the  openly  anti-Christian  Socialism  of  the 
Continental  type. 

I  am  not  advocating  indifference  to  any  interest  I 
have  here  set  aside  as  irrelevant  to  Socialism.  Men 
have  discussed  and  will,  I  hope,  continue  to  discuss  such 
questions  as  I  have  instanced  with  passionate  zeal;   but 


136  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

Socialism  need  not  be  entangled  by  their  decisions.  We 
can  go  on  our  road  to  Socialism,  we  can  get  to  Socialism, 
to  the  civilized  state,  whichever  answer  is  given  to  any  of 
these  questions,  great  or  small. 


CHAPTER  VII 

WOULD   MODERN  SOCIALISM  ABOLISH  ALL  PROPERTY? 

§1 

And  having  in  the  previous  chapter  cleared  up  a  con- 
siderable mass  of  misconception  and  possibility  of  mis- 
representation about  the  attitude  of  Socialism  to  the 
home,  let  us  now  devote  a  little  more  attention  to  the 
current  theory  of  property  and  say  just  exactly  where 
modern  Socialism  stands  in  that  matter. 

The  plain  fact  of  the  case  is  that  the  Socialist,  whether 
he  wanted  to  or  no,  would  no  more  be  able  to  abolish 
personal  property  altogether  than  he  would  be  able  to 
abolish  the  human  liver.  The  extension  of  one's  per- 
sonality to  things  outside  oneself  is  indeed  as  natural  and 
instinctive  a  thing  as  eating.  But  because  the  liver  is 
necessary  and  inevitable,  there  is  no  reason  why  it  should 
be  enlarged  to  uncomfortable  proportions,  and  because 
eating  is  an  unconquerable  instinct  there  is  no  excuse  for 
repletion.  The  position  of  the  modern  Socialist  is  that 
the  contemporary  idea  of  personal  property  is  enormously 

137 


138  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

exaggerated  and  improperly  extended  to  things  that 
ought  not  to  be  "private";  not  that  it  is  not  a  socially 
most  useful  and  desirable  idea  within  its  legitimate  range. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  many  of  those  older  writers 
who  were  "Socialists  before  Socialism,"  Plato,  for  in- 
stance, and  Sir  Thomas  More,  did  very  roundly  abolish 
private  property  altogether.  They  were  extreme  Com- 
munists, and  so  were  many  of  the  earlier  Socialists; 
in  More's  Utopia,  doors  might  not  be  fastened,  they  stood 
open;  one  hadn't  even  a  private  room.  These  earlier 
writers  wished  to  insist  upon  the  need  of  self-abnegation 
in  the  ideal  state,  and  to  startle  and  confound,  they  in- 
sisted overmuch.  The  early  Christians,  one  gathers,  were 
almost  completely  communistic,  and  that  interesting 
experiment  in  Christian  Socialism  (of  a  rather  unortho- 
dox type  of  Christianity),  the  American  Oneida  com- 
munity, was  successfully  communistic  in  every  respect 
for  many  years.  But  the  modern  Socialist  is  not  a  Com- 
munist ;  the  modern  Socialist,  making  his  scheme  of  social 
reconstruction  for  the  whole  world  and  for  every  type  of 
character,  recognizes  the  entire  impracticability  of  such 
dreams,  recognizing  too,  it  may  be,  the  sacrifice  of  human 
personality  and  distinction  such  ideals  involve. 

The  word  "  property, "  one  must  remember,  is  a  slightly 
evasive  word.  Absolute  property  hardly  exists,  absolute, 
that  is  to  say,  in  the  sense  of  unlimited  right  of  disposal ; 


WOULD  SOCIALISM  ABOLISH  PROPERTY?       139 

almost  all  property  is  incomplete  and  relative.  A  man, 
under  our  present  laws,  has  no  absolute  property  even 
in  his  own  life ;  he  is  restrained  from  suicide  and  punished 
if  he  attempt  it.  He  may  not  go  offensively  filthy  nor 
indecently  clad ;  there  are  limits  to  his  free  use  of  his  body. 
The  owner  of  a  house,  of  land,  of  a  factory,  is  subject  to  all 
sorts  of  limitations,  building  regulations,  for  example,  and 
so  is  the  owner  of  horse  or  dog.  Nor  again  is  any  prop- 
erty exempt  from  taxation.  Even  now  property  is  a 
limited  thing,  and  it  is  well  to  bear  that  much  in  mind. 
It  can  only  be  defined  as  something  one  may  do  "what 
one  hkes  with,"  subject  only  to  this  or  that  specific 
restriction,  and  at  any  time  it  would  seem,  the  state  is 
at  least  legally  entitled  to  increase  the  quantity  and 
modify  the  nature  of  the  restriction.  The  extremest 
private  property  is  limited  to  a  certain  sanity  and  hu- 
manity in  its  use. 

In  that  sense  every  adult  nowadays  has  private  prop- 
erty in  his  or  her  own  person,  in  clothes,  in  such  personal 
implements  as  hand-tools,  as  a  bicycle,  as  a  cricket  bat 
or  golf  sticks.  In  quite  the  same  sense  would  he  have  it 
under  Socialism  so  far  as  these  selfsame  things  go.  The 
sense  of  property  in  such  things  is  almost  instinctive; 
my  little  boys  of  five  and  three  have  the  keenest  sense 
of  mine  and  (almost,  if  not  quite  so  vividly)  thine  in  the 
matter    of    toys    and    garments.    The    disposition    of 


140  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

modern  Socialism  is  certainly  no  more  to  override  these 
natural  tendencies  than  it  is  to  fly  in  the  face  of  human 
nature  in  regard  to  the  home.  The  disposition  of  modern 
Socialism  is  indeed  far  more  in  the  direction  of  con- 
firming and  insuring  this  natural  property.  And  again 
modern  Socialism  has  no  designs  upon  the  money  in  a 
man's  pocket.  It  is  quite  true  that  the  earlier  and  ex- 
treme Socialist  theorists  did  in  their  communism  find  no 
use  for  money,  but  I  do  not  think  there  are  any  repre- 
sentative Socialists  now  who  do  not  agree  that  the  state 
must  pay  and  receive  in  money,  that  money  is  indis- 
pensable to  human  freedom.  The  featurelessness  of 
money,  its  universal  convertibility,  gives  human  beings 
a  latitude  of  choice  and  self-expression  in  its  spending 
that  is  inconceivable  without  its  use. 

All  such  property  Socialism  will  ungrudgingly  sustain, 
and  it  will  equally  sustain  property  in  books  and  objects 
of  aesthetic  satisfaction,  in  furnishing,  in  the  apartments 
or  dwelling-house  a  man  or  woman  occupies  and  in  their 
household  implements.  It  will  sustain  far  more  prop- 
erty than  the  average  working-class  man  has  to-day. 
Nor  will  it  prevent  savings  or  accumulations,  if  men  do  not 
choose  to  expend  their  earnings,  —  nor  need  it  interfere 
with  lending.  How  far  it  will  permit  or  countenance 
usury  is  another  question  altogether.  There  will  no 
doubt  remain,  after  all  the  workaday  needs  of  the  world 


WOULD   SOCIALISM  ABOLISH  PROPERTY?        141 

have  been  met  by  a  scientific  public  organization  of  the 
general  property  in  Nature,  a  great  number  of  businesses 
and  enterprises  and  new  and  doubtful  experiments 
outside  the  range  of  legitimate  state  activity.  In  these, 
interested  and  prosperous  people  will  embark  their 
surplus  money  as  shareholders  in  a  limited  liability 
company,  making  partnership  profits  or  losses  in  an  en- 
tirely proper  manner.  But  whether  there  should  be  de- 
bentures and  mortgages  or  preference  shares  or  such  like 
manipulatory  distinctions,  or  interest  in  any  shape  or 
form,  I  am  inclined  to  doubt.  A  money-lender  should 
share  risk  as  well  as  profit  —  that  is  surely  the  moral 
law  in  lending  that  forbids  usury;  he  should  not  be 
allowed  to  bleed  a  failing  business  with  his  inexorable 
percentage  and  so  eat  up  the  ordinary  shareholder  or 
partner  any  more  than  the  landlord  should  be  allowed  to 
eat  up  the  failing  tenant  for  rent.  That  was  once  the 
teaching  of  Chi'istianity,  and  I  do  not  know  enough  of 
the  history  or  spiritual  development  of  the  Catholic 
Church  to  tell  when  she  became  what  she  now  appears  to 
be  —  the  champion  of  the  rent-exacting  landlord  and  the 
usurer  against  Socialism.  It  is  the  present  teaching  of 
Socialism.  If  usury  obtains  at  all  under  the  Socialist 
state,  if  inexorable  repayments  are  to  be  made  in  certain 
cases,  it  will,  I  conceive,  be  a  state  monopoly.  The  state 
will  be  the  sole  banker  for  every  hoard  and  every  enter- 


142  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

prise,  just  as  it  will  be  the  universal  landlord  and  the 
universal  fire  and  accident  and  old-age  insurance  office. 
In  money  matters  as  in  public  service  and  administration, 
it  will  stand  for  the  species,  the  permanent  thing  behind 
every  individual  accident  and  adventure. 

Posthumous  property,  that  is  to  say,  the  power  to  be- 
queath and  the  right  to  inherit  things  will  also  persist  in  a 
mitigated  state  under  Socialism.  There  is  no  reason 
whatever  why  it  should  not  do  so.  There  is  a  strong 
natural  sentiment  in  favour  of  the  institution  of  heir- 
looms, for  example;  one  feels  a  son  might  well  own — ■ 
though  he  should  certainly  not  sell  —  the  intimate 
things  his  father  desires  to  leave  him.  The  pride  of 
descent  is  an  honourable  one,  the  love  for  one's  blood, 
and  I  hope  that  a  thousand  years  from  now  some  de- 
scendant will  still  treasure  an  obsolete  weapon  here,  a 
picture  there,  or  a  piece  of  faint  and  faded  needlework, 
from  our  days  and  the  days  before  our  own.  One  may 
hate  inherited  privileges  and  still  respect  a  family 
tree. 

Widows  and  widowers  again  have  clearly  a  kind  of 
natural  property  in  the  goods  they  have  shared  with  the 
dead;  in  the  home,  in  the  garden  close,  in  the  musical 
instruments  and  books  and  pleasant  homelike  things. 
Now  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  we  do  in  effect  bundle  the 
widow  out;  she  remains  nominally  owner  of  the  former 


WOULD   SOCIALISM  ABOLISH   PROPERTY?         143 

home,  but  she  has  to  let  it  furnished  or  sell  it,  to  go  and 
live  in  a  boarding-house  or  an  exiguous  flat. 

Even  perhaps  a  proportion  of  accumulated  money  may 
reasonably  go  to  friend  or  kin.  It  is  a  question  of  public 
utility ;  Socialism  has  done  with  absolute  propositions  in 
all  such  things,  and  views  these  problems  now  as  ques- 
tions of  detail,  matters  for  fine  discriminations.  We 
want  to  be  quit  of  pedantry.  All  that  property  which  is 
an  enlargement  of  personality,  the  modern  Socialist  seeks 
to  preserve;  it  is  that  exaggerated  property  that  gives 
power  over  the  food  and  needs  of  one's  fellow-creatures, 
property  and  inheritance  in  land,  in  industrial  machinery, 
in  the  homes  of  others,  and  in  the  usurer's  grip  upon 
others,  that  he  seeks  to  destroy.  The  most  doctrinaire 
Socialists  will  tell  you  they  do  not  object  to  property  for 
use  and  consumption  but  only  to  property  in  "the  means 
of  production,"  but  I  do  not  choose  to  resort  to  over- 
precise  definitions.  The  general  intention  is  clear 
enough,  the  particular  instance  requires  particular 
application.  .  .  .  But  it  is  just  because  we  modern 
Socialists  want  every  one  to  have  play  for  choice  and 
individual  expression  in  all  those  realities  of  property 
that  we  object  to  this  monstrous  property  of  a  compara- 
tively small  body  of  individuals  expropriating  the  world. 


144  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

§2 

I  am  inclined  to  think  —  but  here  I  speak  beyond  the 
text  of  contemporary  Socialist  literatm'e  —  that  in 
certain  directions  Socialism,  while  destroying  property, 
will  introduce  a  compensatory  element  by  creating 
rights.  For  example,  Socialism  will  certainly  destroy 
all  private  property  in  land  and  in  natural  material  and 
accumulated  industrial  resources;  it  will  be  the  uni- 
versal landlord  and  the  universal  capitalist,  but  that 
does  not  mean  that  we  shall  all  be  the  State's  Tenants-at- 
will.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  Socialist  state 
will  recognize  the  rights  of  the  improving  occupier  and 
the  beneficial  hirer.  It  is  manifestly  in  accordance  both 
with  justice  and  public  poUcy  that  a  man  who  takes  a 
piece  of  land  and  creates  a  value  on  it  —  by  making  a 
vineyard,  let  us  say — is  entitled  to  security  of  tenure, 
is  to  be  dispossessed  only  in  exceptional  circumstances 
and  with  ample  atonement.  If  a  man  who  takes  an 
agricultural  or  horticultural  holding  comes  to  feel  that 
there  he  will  toil  and  there  later  he  will  rest  upon  his 
labours,  I  do  not  think  a  rational  Socialism  will  war 
against  this  passion  for  the  vine  and  fig  tree.  If  it 
absolutely  refuses  the  idea  of  freehold,  it  will  certainly 
not  repudiate  leasehold.  I  think  the  state  may  prove 
a  far  more  generous  and  sentimental  landlord  in  many 
things  than  any  private  person. 


WOULD  SOCIALISM  ABOLISH  PROPERTY?       145 

In  another  correlated  direction,  too,  Socialism  is  quite 
reconcilable  with  a  finer  quality  of  property  than  our 
landowner-ridden  Britain  allows  to  any  but  the  smallest 
minority.  I  mean  property  in  the  house  one  occupies. 
...  If  I  may  indulge  in  a  quite  unauthorized 
speculation,  I  am  inclined  to  think  there  may  be  two 
collateral  methods  of  home-building  in  the  future.  For 
many  people  always  there  will  need  to  be  houses  to  which 
they  may  come  and  go  for  longer  and  shorter  tenancies 
and  which  they  will  in  no  manner  own.  Nowadays  such 
people  are  housed  in  the  exploits  of  the  jerry  builder  — 
aU  England  is  unsightly  with  their  meagre  pretentious 
villas  and  miserable  cottages  and  tenement  houses. 
Such  homes  in  the  Socialist  future  will  certainly  be  sup- 
plied by  the  local  authority,  but  they  will  be  fair,  decent 
houses  by  good  architects,  fitted  to  be  clean  and  lit,  airy 
and  convenient,  the  homes  of  civilized  people,  sightly 
things  altogether  in  a  generous  and  orderly  world.  But 
in  addition  there  will  be  the  prosperous  private  person 
with  a  taste  that  way,  building  himself  a  home  as  a  lease- 
holder under  the  public  landlord.  For  him,  too,  there 
will  be  a  considerable  measure  of  property,  a  measure  of 
property  that  might  even  extend  to  a  right,  if  not  of  be- 
quest, then  at  any  rate  of  indicating  a  preference  among 
his  possible  successors  in  the  occupying  tenancy.  .  .  . 

Then  there  is  a  whole  field  of  proprietary  sensations  in 


146  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

relation  to  official  duties  and  responsibility.  Men  who 
have  done  good  work  in  any  field  are  not  to  be  lightly 
torn  from  it.  A  medical  officer  of  health  who  has  done 
well  in  his  district,  a  teacher  who  has  taught  a  genera- 
tion of  a  town,  a  man  who  has  made  a  public  garden, 
have  a  moral  lien  upon  their  work  for  all  their  lives. 
They  do  not  get  it  under  our  present  conditions.  I 
know  that  it  will  be  quite  easy  to  say  all  this  is  a  ques- 
tion of  administration  and  detail.  It  is.  But  it  is 
nevertheless  important  to  state  it  clearly  here,  to  make 
it  evident  that  the  coming  of  Socialism  involves  no 
destruction  of  this  sort  of  identific&,tion  of  a  man  with 
the  thing  he  does;  this  identification  that  is  so  natural 
and  desirable  —  that  this  living  and  legitimate  sense  of 
property  will  if  anything  be  encouraged  and  its  claims 
strengthened  under  Socialism.  To-day  that  particularly 
living  sort  of  property-sense  is  often  altogether  disre- 
garded. Every  day  one  hears  of  men  who  have  worked 
up  departments  in  businesses,  men  who  have  created 
values  for  employers,  men  who  have  put  their  lives  into 
an  industrial  machine,  being  flung  aside  because  their 
usefulness  is  over,  or  out  of  personal  pique,  or  to  make 
way  for  favourites,  for  the  employer's  son  or  cousin  or 
what  not,  without  any  sort  of  appeal  or  compensation. 
Ownership  is  autocracy,  at  the  best  it  is  latent  injustice 
in  all  such  matters  of  employment. 


WOULD   SOCIALISM  ABOLISH   PROPERTY?       147 

Then  again,  consider  the  case  of  the  artist  and  the  in- 
ventor who  are  too  often  forced  by  poverty  now  to  sell 
their  early  inventions  for  the  barest  immediate  sub- 
sistence. Speculators  secure  these  initial  efforts  —  some- 
times to  find  them  worthless,  sometimes  to  discover  in 
them  the  sources  of  enormous  wealth.  In  no  matter 
is  it  more  difficult  to  estimate  value  than  in  the  case  of 
creative  work ;  few  geniuses  are  immediately  recognized, 
and  the  history  of  art,  literature,  and  invention  is  full  of 
Chattertons  and  Savages  who  perished  before  recogni- 
tion came,  and  of  Dickenses  who  sold  themselves  unwisely. 
Consider  the  immense  social  benefit  if  the  creator  even 
now  possessed  an  inalienable  right  to  share  in  the  appre- 
ciation of  his  work.  Under  Socialism  it  would  for  all 
his  life  be  his  —  and  the  world's,  and  controllable  by  him. 
He  would  be  free  to  add,  to  modify,  to  repeat. 

In  all  these  respects  modern  Socialism  tends  to  create 
and  confirm  property  and  rights,  the  property  of  the  user, 
the  rights  of  the  creator.  It  is  quite  other  property  it 
tends  to  destroy, — the  property,  the  claim,  of  the  creditor, 
the  mortgager,  the  landlord,  and  usurer,  the  forestaller, 
gambUng  speculator,  monopohzer,  and  absentee.  .  .  . 
In  very  truth  Socialism  would  destroy  no  property  at  all, 
but  only  that  sham  property  that,  like  some  wizard-cast 
illusion,  robs  us  all. 


148  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

§3 

And  now  we  are  discussing  the  truth  about  the  Socialist 
attitude  toward  property,  it  may  be  well  to  consider  a 
little  group  of  objections  that  are  often  made  in  Anti- 
Socialist  tracts.  I  refer  more  particularly  to  a  certain 
hard  case,  the  hard  case  of  the  Savings  of  the  Virtuous 
Small  Man. 

The  reader,  if  he  is  at  all  familiar  with  this  branch  of 
controversial  literature,  probably  knows  how  that  dis- 
tressing case  is  put.  One  is  presented  with  a  poor  man 
of  inconceivable  industry,  goodness,  and  virtue;  he  has 
worked,  he  has  saved ;  at  last,  for  the  security  of  his  old 
age,  he  holds  a  few  shares  in  a  business,  a  "  bit  of  land  "  or, 
perhaps  through  a  building  society,  house  property. 
Would  we  —  the  Anti-Socialist  chokes  with  emotion  — 
so  alter  the  world  as  to  rob  him  of  that?  .  .  .  The 
Anti-Socialist  gathers  himself  together  with  an  effort  and 
goes  on  to  a  still  more  touching  thought  .  .  .  the  widow ! 

Well,  I  think  there  are  assurances  in  the  previous  sec- 
tion to  disabuse  the  reader's  mind  a  little  in  this  matter. 
This  solicitude  for  the  Saving  Small  Man  and  for  the 
widow  and  orphan  seems  to  me  one  of  the  least  honest 
of  all  the  Anti-Socialist  arguments.  The  man  "who 
has  saved  a  few  pounds,"  the  poor  widow  woman  and 
her  children  clinging  to  some  scrap  of  freehold,  are 


WOULD   SOCIALISM   ABOLISH  PROPERTY?       149 

thrust  forward  to  defend  the  harvest  of  the  landlord  and 
the  financier.  Let  us  look  at  the  facts  of  the  case  and  see 
how  this  present  economic  system  of  ours  really  does 
treat  the  "stocking"  of  the  poor. 

In  the  first  place  it  does  not  guarantee  to  the  small 
investor  any  security  for  his  little  hoard  at  all.  He 
comes  into  the  world  of  investment  ill-informed,  credu- 
lous, or  only  unintelligently  suspicious  —  and  he  is,  as  a 
class,  continually  and  systematically  deprived  of  his 
little  accumulations.  One  great  financial  operation  after 
another  in  the  modern  world,  as  any  well-informed 
person  can  witness,  eats  up  the  small  investor.  Some 
huge,  vastly  respectable-looking  enterprise  is  floated  with 
a  capital  of  so  many  scores  or  hundreds  of  thousands, 
divided  into  so  many  thousands  of  ordinary  shares,  so 
many  five  or  six  per  cent  preference,  so  much  debentures. 
It  begins  its  career  with  a  flourish  of  prosperity;  the 
ordinary  shares  for  a  few  years  pay  seven,  eight,  ten  per 
cent.  The  Virtuous  Small  Man  provides  for  his  widow 
and  his  old  age  by  buying  this  estimable  security.  Its 
price  clambers  to  a  premium,  and  so  it  passes  slowly  and 
steadily  from  its  first  speculative  holders  into  the  hands 
of  the  investing  public.  Then  comes  a  slow,  quiet, 
downward  movement,  a  check  at  the  interim  dividend, 
a  rapid  contraction.  Consider  such  a  case  as  that  of  the 
great  British  Electric  Traction  Company  which  began 


150  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

with  ordinary  shares  at  ten,  which  clambered  to  above 
twenty-one  (21|),  which  is  now  (March,  1907)  fluctuat- 
ing about  three  and  a  half.  Its  six  per  cent  preference 
shares  have  moved  between  fourteen  and  seven  and  a 
half.  Its  ordinary  shares  represent  a  total  capital  of 
£1,333,010,  and  its  preference  £1,614,370;  so  that  here 
in  this  one  concern  we  have  a  phantom  appearance  and 
disappearance  of  over  two  million  pounds'  worth  of 
value  and  a  real  disappearance  of  perhaps  half  that 
amount.  It  requires  only  a  very  slight  knowledge  of 
the  world  to  convince  one  that  the  bulk  of  that  sum  was 
contributed  by  the  modest  investments  of  mediocre  and 
small  people  out  of  touch  with  the  real  conditions  of  the 
world  of  finance. 

These  little  investors,  it  is  said,  are  the  bitter  cham- 
pions of  private  finance  against  the  municipalities  and 
Socialists.     One  wonders  why. 

One  can  find  a  score  of  parallels  and  worse  instances 
representing  in  the  end  many  scores  of  millions  of 
pounds  taken  from  the  investing  public  in  the  last  few 
years.  I  will,  however,  content  myself  with  one  sober 
quotation  from  the  New  York  Journal  of  Commerce, 
which  the  reader  will  admit  is  not  likely  to  be  a  willing 
witness  for  Socialism.  Commenting  on  the  testimony  of 
the  principal  witness,  Mr.  Harriman,  of  the  Illinois 
Central  Railroad,  before  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission  (March,  1907),  it  says:  — 


WOULD  SOCIALISM  ABOLISH  PROPERTY?       151 

"On  his  own  admission  he  was  one  of  a  'combine'  of  four 
who  got  possession  of  the  Chicago  and  Alton  Railroad,  and  im- 
mediately issued  bonds  for  $40,000,000,  out  of  the  proceeds  of 
which  they  paid  themselves  a  dividend  of  30  per  cent  on  the 
stock  they  held  besides  taking  the  bonds  at  65  and  subsequently 
selling  them  at  90  or  more,  some  of  them  to  life  insurance  com- 
panies with  which  Mr.  Harriman  had  some  kind  of  relation. 
There  were  no  earnings  or  surplus  out  of  which  the  dividend 
could  be  paid,  but  the  books  of  the  company  were  juggled  by 
transferring  some  $12,000,000  expended  for  betterments  to 
capital  account  as  a  sort  of  bookkeeping  basis  for  the  perform- 
ance. 

"Besides  this,  the  Chicago  and  Alton  Railroad  was  trans- 
formed into  a  'railway'  and  a  capitalization  of  a  little  under 
$40,000,000  was  swollen  to  nearly  $123,000,000  to  cover  an 
actual  expenditure  in  improvements  of  $22,500,000.  In  the 
process  there  was  an  injection  of  about  $60,000,000  of  'water' 
into  the  stock  held  by  the  four,  some  of  which  was  sold  to  the 
Union  Pacific,  of  which  Mr.  Harriman  was  president,  and  more 
was  unloaded  upon  the  Rock  Island.  Mr.  Harriman  refused  to 
tell  how  much  he  made  out  of  that  operation. 

"It  shows  how  some  of  our  enormous  fortunes  are  made  as 
well  as  what  motives  and  purposes  sometimes  prevail  in  the  use 
of  the  power  intrusted  to  the  directors  and  officers  of  corpora- 
tions. It  is  a  simple  and  elementary  principle  that  all  values  are 
created  by  the  productive  activity  of  capital,  labour,  and  abil- 
ity in  industrial  operations  of  one  kind  and  another.  No  wealth 
comes  out  of  nothing,  but  all  must  be  produced  and  distributed, 
and  what  one  gets  by  indirection  another  loses  or  fails  to  get. 
The  personal  profit  of  these  speculative  operations  in  which  the 
capital,  credit,  and  power  of  corporations  are  used  by  those 
intrusted  with  their  direction  come  out  of  the  general  body  of 


152  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

stockholders  whose  interests  are  sacrificed,  or  out  of  the  public 
investors  who  are  lured  and  deceived,  or  out  of  shippers  who 
are  overtaxed,  for  the  service  for  which  railroads  are  chartered, 
or  out  of  all  these  in  varying  proportions.  In  other  words  they 
are  the  fruits  of  robbery." 

So  that  you  see  it  is  not  only  untrue  that  Socialism 
would  rob  a  poor  man  of  his  virtuously  acquired  "  bit  of 
property,"  but  the  direct  contrary  is  the  truth,  that  the 
present  system,  non-Socialism,  is  now  constantly  butch- 
ering thrift!  Simple  people  believe  the  great  finan- 
ciers win  and  lose  money  to  each  other.  They  are  not, 
to  put  it  plainly,  such  fools.  They  use  the  public,  and 
the  public  goes  on  being  used,  as  a  perpetual  source  of 
freshly  accumulated  wealth.  I  know  one  case  of  a  man 
of  fifty  who  serves  in  a  shop,  a  most  industrious,  compe- 
tent man,  who  has  been  saving  and  investing  money  all 
his  life  in  what  he  had  every  reason  to  believe  were  safe 
and  sober  businesses ;  he  has  been  denying  himself  pleas- 
ures, cramping  his  life  to  put  by  about  a  third  of  his 
wages  every  year  since  he  was  two  and  twenty,  and 
to-day  he  has  not  got  his  keep  for  a  couple  of  years,  and 
his  only  security  against  disablement  and  old  age  is  his 
subscription  to  a  Friendly  Society,  a  society  which  I  have 
a  very  strong  suspicion  is  no  better  off  than  most  other 
Friendly  Societies  —  and  that  is  by  no  means  well  off,  and 
bv  no  means  confident  of  the  future. 


WOULD  SOCIALISM   ABOLISH  PROPERTY?       153 

It  is  possible  to  argue  that  the  small  man  ought  to 
take  more  pains  about  his  investments ;  but,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  investing  money  securely  and  profitably  is  a 
special  occupation  of  extraordinary  complexity,  and  the 
common  man  with  a  few  hundred  pounds  has  no  more 
chance  in  that  market  than  he  would  have  under  water 
in  Sydney  Harbour  amidst  a  shoal  of  sharks.  It  may 
be  said  that  he  is  greedy,  wants  too  much  interest,  but 
that  is  nonsense.  One  of  the  cruellest  gulfs  into  which 
small  savings  have  gone,  in  the  case  of  the  British  public, 
has  been  the  trap  of  Consols  which  pay  even  at  the 
present  price  less  than  three  per  cent.  Servants  and 
working  men  with  Post-office  Savings'  Bank  accounts  were 
urged,  tempted,  and  assisted  to  invest  in  this  solemn 
security,  even  when  it  stood  at  114.  Those  who  did  so 
have  now  (March,  1907)  lost  a  quarter  of  their  money. 

It  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  a  very  large  pro- 
portion of  our  modern  great  properties,  tramway  systems, 
railways,  gasworks,  bread  companies,  have  been  created 
for  their  present  owners,  —  the  debenture-holders  and 
mortgagers,  the  great  capitalists,  —  by  the  unintentional 
altruism  of  that  voluntary  martyr,  the  Saving  Small  Man. 

Of  course  the  habitual  saver  can  insure  with  an  insur- 
ance company  for  his  old  age  and  against  aU  sorts  of 
misadventures,  and  because  of  the  government  inter- 
ference with  "private  enterprise"  in  that  sort  of  business 


154  NEW   WORLDS   FOR   OLD 

be  reasonably  secure ;  but  under  Socialism  he  would  be 
able  to  do  that  with  absolute  security  in  the  State  Insur- 
ance Office  if  the  universal  old-age  pension  did  not 
satisfy  him.  That,  however,  is  beside  our  present  dis- 
cussion. I  am  writing  now  only  of  the  sort  of  property 
that  Socialism  would  destroy,  and  to  show  how  little 
benefit  or  safety  it  brings  to  the  small  owner  now.  The 
unthinking  rich  prate  "thrift"  to  the  poor,  and  grow 
richer  by  a  half-judicious,  half-unconscious  absorption 
of  the  resultant  savings ;  that,  in  brief,  is  the  grim 
humour  of  our  present  financial  method. 

It  is  not  only  in  relation  to  investments  that  this 
absorption  of  small  parcels  of  savings  goes  on.  In  every 
town  the  intelligent  and  sympathetic  observer  may  see, 
vivid  before  the  eyes  of  all  who  are  not  blind  by  use  and 
wont,  the  slow  subsidence  of  petty  accumulations.  The 
lodging-house  and  the  small  retail  shop  are,  as  it  were, 
social  "destructors";  all  over  the  country  they  are 
converting  hopeful,  enterprising,  ill-advised  people  with, 
a  few  score  or  hundreds  of  pounds,  slowly,  inevitably  into 
broken-hearted  failures.  It  is  to  my  mind  the  cruellest 
aspect  of  our  economic  struggle.  In  the  little  High 
Street  of  Sandgate  over  which  my  house  looks,  I  should 
say  between  a  quarter  and  a  third  of  the  shops  are  such 
downward  channels  from  decency  to  despair;  they  are 
sanctioned,   inevitable    citizen-breakers.     Now  it  is  a 


WOULD  SOCIALISM   ABOLISH  PROPERTY?        155 

couple  of  old  servants  opening  a  ''fancy"  shop  or  a  to- 
bacco shop,  now  it  is  a  young  couple  plunging  into  the 
haberdashery,  now  it  is  a  new  butcher  or  a  new  fishmonger 
or  a  grocer.  This  perpetual  proce  sion  of  bankruptcies 
has  made  me  lately  shun  that  pleasant-looking  street, 
that  in  my  unthinking  days  I  walked  through  cheerfully 
enough.  The  doomed  victims  have  a  way  of  coming  to 
the  doors  at  first  and  looking  out  politely  and  hopefully. 
There  is  a  rich  and  lucrative  business  done  by  certain 
wholesale  firms  in  starting  the  small  dealer  in  almost 
every  branch  of  retail  trade;  they  fit  up  his  shop,  stock 
him,  take  his  one  or  two  hundred  pounds  and  give  him 
credit  for  forty  or  fifty.  The  rest  of  his  story  is  an  im- 
possible struggle  to  pay  rent  and  get  that  debt  down. 
Things  go  on  for  a  time  quite  bravely. 

I  go  furtively  and  examine  the  goods  in  the  window 
with  a  dim  hope  that  this  time  something  really  will 
come  off;  I  learn  reluctantly  from  my  wife  that  they 
are  no  better  than  any  one  else's  and  rather  dearer  than 
those  of  the  one  or  two  solid  and  persistent  shops  that 
do  the  steady  business  of  the  place.  Perhaps  I  see  the 
new  people  going  to  church  once  or  twice  very  respect- 
ably, as  I  set  out  for  a  Sunday  walk,  and  if  they  are  a 
young  couple,  the  husband  usually  wears  a  silk  hat. 
Presently  the  stock  in  the  window  begins  to  deteriorate 
in  quantity  and  quality,  and  then  I  know  that  credit  is 


156  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

tightening.  The  proprietor  no  longer  comes  to  the  door, 
and  his  first  bright  confidence  is  gone.  He  regards  one 
now  through  the  darkhng  panes  with  a  gloomy  animosity. 
He  suspects  one  all  too  truly  of  dealing  with  the 
"Stores."  .  .  .  Then  suddenly  he  has  gone;  the  sav- 
ings are  gone,  and  the  shop,  like  a  hungry  maw,  waits 
for  a  new  victim.  There  is  the  simple  common  tragedy 
of  the  little  shop;  the  landlord  of  the  house  has  his 
money  all  right,  the  ground  landlord  has,  of  course, 
every  penny  of  his  money;  the  kindly  wholesalers  are 
well  out  of  it,  and  the  young  couple  or  the  old  people, 
as  the  case  may  be,  are  looking  for  work  or  the  nearest 
casual  ward  —  just  as  though  there  was  no  such  virtue 
as  thrift  in  the  world. 

The  particular  function  of  the  British  lodging-house  — 
though  the  science  of  economics  is  silent  on  this  point  — 
is  to  use  up  the  last  strength  of  the  trusty  old  servant  and 
the  plucky  widow.  These  people  will  invest  from  two  or 
three  hundred  to  a  thousand  pounds  in  order  to  gain  a 
bare  subsistence  by  toiling  for  boarders  and  lodgers.  It 
is  their  idea  of  a  safe  investment.  They  can  see  it  all  the 
time.  All  over  England  this  process  goes  on.  The  cu- 
rious inquirer  may  see  every  phase  for  himself  by  simply 
looking  for  rooms  among  the  apartment  houses  of  such  a 
region  as  Camden  Town,  London;  he  will  realize  more 
and  more  surely  as  he  goes  about  that  none  of  these 


WOULD  SOCIALISM   ABOLISH  PROPERTY?       157 

people  gain  money,  none  of  them  ever  recover  the  capital 
they  sink,  they  are  happy  if  they  die  before  their  inevi- 
table financial  extinction.  It  is  so  habitual  with  people 
to  think  of  classes  as  stable,  of  a  butcher  or  a  baker  as  a 
man  who  keeps  a  shop  of  a  certain  sort  at  a  certain  level 
throughout  a  long  and  indeterminate  life,  that  it  may 
seem  incredible  to  many  readers  that  those  two  typically 
thrifty  classes,  the  lodging-letting  householder  and  the 
small  retailer,  are  maintained  by  a  steady  supply  of 
failing  individuals ;  the  fact  remains  that  it  is  so.  Their 
little  savings  are  no  good  to  them,  investments  and 
business  beginnings  mock  them  alike;  steadily,  relent- 
lessly, our  competitive  system  eats  them  up. 

It  is  said  that  no  class  of  people  in  the  community  is 
more  hostile  to  Socialism  and  Socialistic  legislation  than 
these  small  owners  and  petty  investors,  these  small 
rate-payers.  They  do  not  understand.  Rent  they 
consider  in  the  nature  of  things  like  hunger  and  thirst; 
the  economic  process  that  dooms  the  weak  enterprise  to 
ruin  is  beyond  the  scope  of  their  intelligence;  but  the 
rate-collector  who  calls  and  calls  again  for  money, 
for  more  money,  to  educate  "other  people's  children," 
to  "keep  paupers  in  luxury,"  to  "waste  upon  roads  and 
light  and  trams,"  seems  the  agent  of  an  unendurable 
wrong.  So  the  poor  creatures  go  out  pallidly  angry  to 
vote  down  that  hated  thing,  municipal  enterprise,  and 


158  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

to  make  still  more  scope  for  that  big  finance  that  crushes 
them  in  the  wine-press  of  its  exploitation.  It  is  a 
wretched  and  tragic  antagonism,  for  which  every  intel- 
ligent Socialist  must  needs  have  sympathy,  which  he 
must  meet  with  patience  —  and  lucid  explanations.  If 
the  public  authority  took  rent,  there  would  be  no  need  of 
rates;  that  is  the  more  obvious  proposition.  But  the 
ampler  one  is  the  cruelty,  the  absurdity,  and  the  social 
injury  of  the  constant  consumption  of  unprotected 
savings  which  is  integral  in  our  present  system. 

It  is  a  doctrinaire  and  old-fashioned  Socialism  that 
quarrels  with  the  little  hoard;  the  quarrel  of  modern 
Socialism  is  with  the  landowner  and  the  great  capitalist 
who  devour  it. 

§4 

While  we  are  discussing  the  true  attitude  of  modern 
Socialism  to  property,  it  will  be  well  to  explain  quite 
clearly  the  secular  change  of  opinion  that  is  going  on  in 
the  Socialist  ranks  in  regard  to  the  process  of  expropria- 
tion. Even  in  the  case  of  those  sorts  of  property  that 
Socialism  repudiates,  property  in  land,  natural  produc- 
tions, inherited  business  capital,  and  the  like,  Socialism 
has  become  humanized  and  rational  from  its  first  extreme 
and  harsh  positions. 

The  earlier  Socialism  was  fierce  and  unjust  to  owners. 


WOULD  SOCIALISM   ABOLISH  PROPERTY?       159 

"Property  is  Robbery,"  said  Proudhon,  and  right  down 
to  the  nineties  Socialism  kept  too  much  of  the  spirit 
of  that  proposition.  The  property-owner  was  to  be 
promptly  and  entirely  deprived  of  his  goods  and  to 
think  himself  lucky  he  was  not  lynched  forthwith  as  an 
abominable  rascal.  The  first  Basis  of  the  Fabian  So- 
ciety framed  so  lately  as  1884  repudiates  ''  compensation" 
—  even  a  partial  compensation  of  property-owners  — 
though  in  its  practical  proposals  the  Fabian  Society  has 
always  been  saner  than  its  creed. 

Now  property  is  not  robbery.  It  may  be  a  mistake, 
it  may  be  unjust  and  socially  disadvantageous  to  recog- 
nize private  property  in  these  great  common  interests; 
but  every  one  concerned,  and  the  majority  of  the  prop- 
erty-owners certainly,  held  and  hold  in  good  faith,  and 
do  their  best  by  the  light  they  have.  We  live  to-day 
in  a  vast  tradition  of  relationships  in  which  the  rightful- 
ness of  that  kind  of  private  property  is  assumed,  and 
suddenly,  instantly,  to  deny  and  abolish  it  would  be  —  I 
write  this  as  a  convinced  and  thorough  Socialist  —  quite 
the  most  dreadful  catastrophe  human  society  could 
experience.  For  what  sort  of  provisional  government 
should  we  have  in  that  confusion  ? 

Expropriation  must  be  a  gradual  process,  a  process  of 
economic  and  political  readjustment,  accompanied  at 
every   step   by   an   explanatory   educational   advance. 


160  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

There  is  no  reason  why  a  cultivated  property-owner 
should  not  welcome  and  hasten  its  coming.  Modern 
Socialism  is  prepared  to  compensate  him,  not  perhaps 
"fully"  but  reasonably,  for  his  renunciations  and  to 
avail  itself  of  his  help,  to  relieve  him  of  his  administrative 
duties,  his  excess  of  responsibility  for  estate  and  business. 
It  does  not  grudge  him  a  compensating  annuity  nor  ter- 
minating rights  of  user.  It  has  no  intention  of  obliterat- 
ing him  nor  the  things  he  cares  for.  It  wants  not  only 
to  socialize  his  possessions,  but  to  socialize  his  achieve- 
ment in  culture  and  all  that  leisure  has  taught  him  of  the 
possibilities  of  life.  It  wants  aU  men  to  become  as  fine 
as  he.  Its  enemy  is  not  the  rich  man  but  the  aggressive 
rich  man,  the  usurer,  the  sweater,  the  giant  plunderer, 
who  are  developing  the  latent  evil  of  riches.  It  repu- 
diates altogether  the  conception  of  a  bitter  class-war 
between  those  who  Have  and  those  who  Have  Not. 

But  this  new  tolerant  spirit  in  method  involves  no 
weakening  of  the  ultimate  conception.  Modern  So- 
cialism sets  itself  absolutely  against  the  creation  of  new 
private  property  out  of  land,  or  rights  or  concessions  not 
yet  assigned.  All  new  great  monopolistic  enterprises  in 
transit,  building,  and  cultivation,  for  example,  must  from 
the  first  be  under  public  ownership.  And  the  chief  work 
of  social  statesmanship,  the  secular  process  of  govern- 
ment, must  be  the  steady,  orderly  resumption  by  the 


WOULD   SOCIALISM  ABOLISH   PROPERTY?       161 

community,  without  violence  and  without  delay,  of  the 
land,  of  the  apparatus  of  transit,  of  communication,  of 
food  distribution,  and  of  all  the  great  common  services 
of  mankind,  and  the  care  and  training  of  a  new  gen- 
eration in  their  collective  use  and  in  more  civilized 
conceptions  of  living. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   MIDDLE-CLASS   MAN   AND   SOCIALISM 

And  let  me  here  insert  a  few  remarks  upon  a  question 
that  arises  naturally  out  of  the  preceding  sections,  and 
that  is  the  future  of  that  miscellaneous  section  of  the 
community  known  as  the  middle  class.  It  is  one  that 
I  happen  to  know  with  a  special  intimacy. 

For  a  century  or  more  the  grinding  out  of  the  middle 
class  has  been  going  on.  I  began  to  find  it  interesting  — 
altogether  too  interesting  indeed — when  I  was  still  only  a 
little  boy.  My  father  was  one  of  that  multitude  of  small 
shopkeepers  which  has  been  caught  between  the  "Stores" 
and  such-like  big  distributors  above  and  the  rising  rates 
below,  and  from  the  knickerbocker  stage  onward  I  was 
acutely  aware  of  the  question  hanging  over  us.  ''This 
isn't  going  on"  was  the  proposition.  "This  shop  in 
which  our  capital  is  invested  will  never  return  it.  No- 
body seems  to  understand  what  is  happening,  and  there  is 
nobody  to  advise  or  help  us.    What  are  we  going  to  do  ?  " 

Except  that  people  are  beginning  to  understand  a 
little  now  what   it   all  means,  exactly  the  same  ques- 

162 


THE  MIDDLE-CLASS  MAN   AND  SOCIALISM       163 

tion  hangs  over  many  hundreds  of  thousands  of  house- 
holds to-day,  not  only  over  the  hundreds  of  small 
shopkeepers,  but  of  small  professional  men,  of  people 
living  upon  small  parcels  of  investments,  of  clerks  and 
such-like  who  find  themselves  growing  old  and  their  value 
depreciated  by  the  competition  of  a  new,  better-educated 
generation,  of  private  schoolmasters,  of  boarding  and 
lodging  house  keepers,  and  the  like.  They  are  all  vaguely 
aware  of  something  more  than  personal  failure,  of  a  drift 
and  process  which  is  against  all  their  kind,  of  the  need  of 
"doing  something"  for  themselves  and  their  children, 
something  different  from  just  sticking  to  the  shop  or  the 
"situation"  —  and  they  don't  know  what  to  do  !  What 
ought  they  to  do  ? 

Well,  first,  before  one  answers  that,  let  us  ask  what  it 
is  exactly  that  is  grinding  the  middle  class  in  this  way. 
Is  it  a  process  we  can  stop?  Can  we  direct  the  mill- 
stones ?  If  we  can,  ought  we  to  do  so  ?  And  if  we  can- 
not, or  decide  that  it  isn't  worth  while,  then  what  can 
we  do  to  mitigate  this  cruelty  of  slowly  impoverishing 
and  taxing  out  of  existence  a  class  that  was  once  the 
backbone  of  the  community  ?  It  is  not  mere  humanity 
dictates  this  much,  it  is  a  question  that  affects  the  state 
as  a  whole.  It  must  be  extremely  bad  for  the  spirit 
of  the  nation  and  for  our  national  future  that  its  middle 
mass  should  be  in  a  state  of  increasing  financial  worry 


164  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

and  stress,  irritated,  depressed,  and  broken  in  courage. 
One  effect  is  manifest  in  our  British  politics  now.  Each 
fresh  election  turns  upon  expenditure  more  evidently 
than  the  last,  and  the  promise  to  reduce  taxation  or  lower 
the  rates  overrides  more  and  more  certainly  any  other 
consideration.  What  are  Empire  or  Education  to  men 
who  feel  themselves  drifting  helplessly  into  debt? 
What  chance  has  any  constructive  scheme  with  an  elec- 
torate of  men  who  are  being  slowly  submerged  in  an 
economic  bog? 

The  process  that  has  brought  the  middle  class  into 
these  troubles  is  a  complex  one,  but  the  essential  thing 
about  it  seems  to  be  this,  that  there  is  a  change  of  scale 
going  on  in  most  human  affairs,  a  substitution  of  big 
organizations  for  detached  individual  effort  almost  every- 
where. A  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  or  so  the  only  very 
rich  people  in  the  community  were  a  handful  of  great 
landowners  and  a  few  bankers;  the  rest  of  the  world's 
business  was  being  done  by  small  prosperous  inde- 
pendent men.  The  labourers  and  poor  were  often  very 
poor  and  wretched,  ill-clad,  bootless,  badly  housed,  and 
short  of  food,  but  there  was  nevertheless  a  great  deal  of 
middle-class  comfort  and  prosperity.  The  country  was 
covered  with  flourishing  farmers;  every  country  town 
was  a  little  world  in  itself,  with  busy  tradespeople  and 
professional  men;   manufacturing  was  still  done  mainly 


THE   MIDDLE-CLASS  MAN  AND  SOCIALISM       165 

by  small  people  employing  a  few  hands,  master  and 
apprentice  worked  together ;  in  every  town  you  found  a 
parish  school  or  so,  an  independent  doctor  and  the  like, 
doing  well  in  a  mediocre,  comfortable  fashion.  All  the 
carrying  trade  was  in  the  hands  of  small  independent 
carriers;  the  shipping  was  held  by  hundreds  of  small 
shipowners.  And  London  itself  was  only  a  larger  coun- 
try town.  It  was,  in  effect,  a  middle-class  world  ruled 
over  by  aristocrats;  the  millstones  had  as  yet  scarcely 
stirred. 

Then  machinery  came  into  the  lives  of  men,  and  steam 
power,  and  there  began  that  change  of  scale  which  is 
going  on  still  to-day,  making  an  ever  widening  separa- 
tion of  master  and  man  and  an  ever  enlarging  organiza- 
tion of  industry  and  social  method.  Its  most  striking 
manifestation  was  at  first  the  substitution  of  organized 
manufacture  in  factories  for  the  half-domestic  hand- 
industrialism  of  the  earlier  period;  the  growth  of  the 
fortunes  of  some  of  the  merchants  and  manufacturers  to 
dimensions  comparable  with  the  wealth  of  the  great 
landowners,  and  the  sinking  of  the  rest  of  their  class 
toward  the  status  of  wage-earners.  The  development  of 
joint-stock  enterprise  arose  concurrently  with  this  to 
create  a  new  sort  of  partnership  capable  of  handling  far 
greater  concerns  than  any  single  wealthy  person,  as 
wealth  was  measured  by  the  old  scale,  could  do.    There 


166  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

followed  a  great  development  of  transit,  culminating  for 
a  time  in  the  coming  of  the  railways  and  steamships,  which 
abolished  the  isolation  of  the  old  towns  and  brought 
men  at  the  remotest  quarters  of  the  earth  into  business 
competition.  Big  towns  of  the  modern  type,  with  half 
a  million  inhabitants  or  more,  grew  up  rapidly  all  over 
Europe  and  America.  For  the  European  big  towns  are 
as  modern  as  New  York,  and  the  East  End  and  south 
side  of  London  scarcely  older  than  Chicago.  Shop- 
keeping,  like  manufactures,  began  to  concentrate  in 
large  establishments,  and  big  wholesale  distribution  to 
replace  individual  buying  and  selling.  As  the  need  for 
public  education  under  the  changing  conditions  of  life 
grew  more  and  more  urgent,  the  individual  enterprise  of 
this  schoolmaster  and  that  gave  place  to  the  organized 
effort  of  such  giant  societies  as  (in  Britain)  the  old 
National  School  Society  and  the  British  School  Society, 
and  at  last  to  state  education.  And  one  after  an- 
other the  old  prosperous  middle-class  callings  fell  under 
the  stress  of  the  new  development. 

The  process  still  goes  on,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt 
of  the  ultimate  issue.  The  old  small  manufacturers  are 
either  ruined  or  driven  into  sweating  and  the  slums; 
the  old  coaching  innkeeper  and  common  carrier  have 
been  impoverished  or  altogether  superseded  by  the 
railways  and  big  carrier  companies ;  the  once  flourishing 


THE  MIDDLE-CLASS  MAN   AND   SOCL\LISM       167 

shopkeeper  lives  to-day  on  the  mere  remnants  of  the 
trade  that  great  distributing  stores  or  the  branches  of 
great  companies  have  left  him.  Tea  companies,  pro- 
vision-dealing companies,  tobacconist  companies,  make 
the  position  of  the  old-established  private  shop  unstable 
and  the  chances  of  the  new  beginner  hopeless.  Railways 
and  tramways  take  the  custom  more  and  more  effec- 
tually past  the  door  of  the  small  draper  and  outfitter  to 
the  well-stocked  establishments  at  the  centre  of  things; 
telephone  and  telegraph  assist  that  shopping  at  the  centre 
more  and  more.  The  small  "middle-class"  schoolmaster 
finds  himself  beaten  by  revived  endowed  schools  and  by 
new  public  endowments;  the  small  doctor,  the  local 
dentist,  find  Harley  Street  always  nearer  to  them  and 
practitioners  in  motor-cars  from  the  great  centres  play- 
ing havoc  with  their  practices.  And  while  the  small  men 
are  more  and  more  distressed,  the  great  organizations  of 
trade,  of  production,  of  pubhc  science,  continue  to  grow 
and  coalesce,  until  at  last  they  grow  into  national  or  even 
world  trusts,  or  into  publicly  owned  monopolies.  In 
America  slaughtering  and  selling  meat  has  grown  into 
a  trust,  steel  and  iron  are  trustified,  mineral  oil  is  all  gath- 
ered into  a  few  hands.  All  through  the  trades  and  pro- 
fessions and  sciences  and  all  over  the  world  the  big  eats 
up  the  small,  the  new  enlarged  scale  replaces  the  old. 
And  this  is  equally  true,  though  it  is  only  now  beginning 


168  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

to  be  recognized,  of  the  securities  of  that  other  section  of 
the  middle  class,  the  section  which  lives  upon  invested 
money.  There,  too,  big  eats  little.  There,  too,  the 
small  man  is  more  and  more  manifestly  at  the  mercy  of 
the  large  organization.  It  was  a  pleasant  illusion  of  the 
Victorian  time  that  one  put  one's  hundred  pounds  or 
thousand  pounds  "into  something,"  beside  the  rich 
man's  tens  of  thousands,  and  drew  one's  secure  and  satis- 
fying dividends.  The  intelligent  reader  of  Mr.  Lawson's 
Frenzied  Finance  or  of  the  bankruptcy  proceedings  of 
Mr.  Hooley  realizes  this  idyll  is  scarcely  true  to  nature. 
Through  the  seas  and  shallows  of  investment  flow  great 
tides  and  depressions,  on  which  the  big  fortunes  ride  to 
harbour  while  the  little  accumulations,  capsized  and 
swamped,  quiver  down  to  the  bottom.  It  becomes  more 
and  more  true  that  the  small  man  saves  his  money  for  the 
rich  man's  pocket.  Only  by  drastic  state  intervention  is 
a  certain  measure  of  safety  secured  for  insurance,  and  in 
America  recently  we  have  had  the  spectacle  of  the  people's 
insurance-money  used  as  a  till  by  the  rich  financiers. 

And  when  the  middle-class  man  turns  in  his  despera- 
tion from  the  advance  of  the  big  competitor  who  is  con- 
suming him,  as  a  big  codfish  eats  its  little  brother,  to  the 
state,  he  meets  a  tax-paper;  he  sees  as  the  state's  most 
immediate  aspect  the  rate-collector  and  inexorable  de- 
mands.    The  burden  of  taxation  certainly  falls  upon 


THE  MIDDLE-CLASS  MAN  AND  SOCIALISM      169 

him,  and  it  falls  upon  him  because  he  is  collectively  the 
weakest  class  that  possesses  any  property  to  be  taxed. 
Below  him  are  classes  either  too  poor  to  tax  or  too 
politically  effective  to  stand  taxation.  Above  him  is 
the  class  which  owns  a  large  part  of  the  property  in  the 
world;  but  it  also  owns  the  newspapers  and  periodicals 
that  are  necessary  for  an  adequate  discussion  of  social 
justice,  and  it  finds  it  cheaper  to  pay  a  voluntary  tax  to 
the  hoardings  at  election  time  than  to  take  over  the 
small  man's  burdens.  He  rolls  about  between  these  two 
parties,  antagonized  first  to  one  and  then  the  other,  and 
altogether  helpless  and  ineffectual.  So  the  millstones 
grind,  and  so  it  would  seem  they  will  continue  to  grind 
until  there  is  nothing  between  them;  until  organized 
property  in  the  hands  of  the  few  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
proletariat  on  the  other  grind  face  to  face.  So,  at  least, 
Karl  Marx  taught  in  Das  Kapital. 

But  when  one  says  the  middle  class  will  disappear,  one 
means  that  it  will  disappear  as  a  class.  Its  individuals 
and  its  children  will  survive,  and  the  whole  process  is  not 
nearly  so  fatalistic  as  the  Marxists  would  have  us  believe. 
The  new  great  organizations  that  are  replacing  the  little 
private  enterprises  of  the  world  before  machinery  are 
not  all  private  property.  There  are  alternatives  in  the 
matter  of  handling  a  great  business.  To  the  exact  nature 
of  these  alternatives  the  middle-class  mind  needs  to 


170  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

direct  itself  if  it  is  to  exert  any  control  whatever  over  its 
future.  Take  the  case  of  the  butcher.  It  is  manifestly 
written  on  the  scroll  of  destiny  that  the  little  private 
slaughter-house,  the  little  independent  butcher's  shop, 
buying  and  selling  locally,  must  disappear.  The  meat 
will  all  be  slaughtered  at  some  great,  conveniently  or- 
ganized centre,  and  distributed  thence  to  shops  that  will 
necessarily  be  mere  agencies  for  distributing  meat. 
Now,  this  great  slaughtering  and  distributing  business 
may  either  be  owned  by  one  or  a  group  of  owners  working 
for  profit  —  in  which  case  it  will  be  necessary  for  the 
state  to  employ  an  unremunerative  army  of  inspectors  to 
see  that  the  business  is  kept  decently  clean  and  honest 
—  or  it  may  be  run  by  the  public  authority.  In  the 
former  case  the  present-day  butcher  or  his  son  will  be 
a  slaughterman  or  shopkeeper  employed  by  the  private 
owners;  in  the  latter  case  by  the  public  authority. 
This  is  equally  true  of  a  milk-seller,  of  a  small  manu- 
facturer, of  a  builder,  of  a  hundred  and  one  other  trades. 
They  are  bound  to  be  incorporated  in  a  larger  organiza- 
tion; they  are  bound  to  become  salaried  men  where  for- 
merly they  were  independent  men,  and  it  is  no  good 
struggling  against  that.  It  is  doubtful,  indeed,  whether 
from  the  standpoint  of  welfare  it  would  be  worth  the 
middle-class  man's  while  to  struggle  against  that.  But 
in  the  case  of  very  many  great  public  services  —  meat, 


THE  MIDDLE-CLASS  MAN  ALD   SOCIALISM       171 

milk,  bread,  transit,  housing,  and  land  administration, 
education  and  research,  and  the  public  health  —  it  is 
still  an  open  question  whether  the  big  organization  is 
to  be  publicly  owned,  publicly  controlled,  and  constantly 
refreshed  by  public  scrutiny  and  comment,  or  whether 
it  is  to  be  privately  owned,  and  conducted  solely  for  the 
profit  of  a  small  group  of  very  rich  owners.  The  alter- 
natives are  Plutocracy  or  Socialism,  and  between  these 
the  middle-class  man  remains  weakly  undecided  and 
ineffectual,  lending  no  weight  to  and  getting  small  con- 
sideration therefore  from  either  side.  He  remains  so 
because  he  has  not  grasped  the  real  nature  of  his  problem, 
because  he  clings  in  the  face  of  overwhelming  fate  to  the 
belief  that  in  some  way  the  wheels  of  change  may  be 
arrested  and  his  present  method  of  living  preserved. 
I  think,  if  he  could  shake  himself  free  from  that  im- 
possible conservatism,  he  would  realize  that  his  interests 
lie  with  the  interests  of  the  intelligent  working-class 
man  —  that  is  to  say,  in  the  direction  of  Socialism  rather 
than  in  the  direction  of  capitalistic  competition;  that 
the  best  use  he  can  make  of  such  educational  and  social 
advantages  as  still  remain  for  him  is  to  become  the  will- 
ing leader  instead  of  the  panic-fierce  antagonist  of  the 
Socialist  movement.  His  place,  I  hold,  is  to  forward  the 
development  of  that  state  and  municipal  machinery 
the  Socialist  foreshadows,  and  to  secure  for  himself  and 


172  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

his  sons  and  daughters  an  adequate  position  and  voice  in 
the  administration.  Instead  of  struggling  to  diminish 
that  burthen  of  public  expenditure  which  educates  and 
houses,  conveys  and  protects  him  and  his  children,  he 
ought  rather  to  increase  it  joyfully,  while  at  the  same 
time  working  manfully  to  transfer  its  pressure  to  the 
broad  shoulders  of  those  very  rich  people  who  have 
hitherto  evaded  their  legitimate  share  of  it.  The  other 
course  is  to  continue  his  present  policy  of  obstinate 
resistance  to  the  extension  of  public  property  and  public 
services.  In  which  case  these  things  will  necessarily 
become  that  basis  of  monopolistic  property  on  which  the 
coming  Plutocracy  will  establish  itself.  The  middle- 
class  man  will  be  taxed  and  competed  out  of  indepen- 
dence just  the  same,  and  he  will  become  a  salaried  officer 
just  the  same,  but  with  a  different  sort  of  master  and 
under  different  social  conditions  according  as  one  or  other 
of  these  alternatives  prevails. 

Which  is  the  better  master  —  the  democratic  state 
or  a  "combine"  of  millionaires?  Which  will  give  the 
best  social  atmosphere  for  one's  children  to  breathe  —  a 
Plutocracy  or  a  Socialism?  That  is  the  real  question 
to  which  the  middle-class  man  should  address  himself. 

No  doubt  to  many  minds  a  Plutocracy  presents  many 
attractions.  In  the  works  of  Thomas  Love  Peacock, 
and  still  more  clearly  in  the  works  of  Mr.  W.  H.  Mallock, 


THE  MIDDLE-CLASS   MAN   AND  SOCIALISM       173 

you  will  find  an  agreeable  rendering  of  that  conception. 
The  bulk  of  the  people  will  be  organized  out  of  sight  in 
a  state  of  industrious  and  productive  congestion,  and  a 
wealthy,  leisurely,  and  refined  minority  will  live  in  spa- 
cious homes,  with  excellent  museums,  libraries,  and  all 
the  equipments  of  culture ;  will  go  to  town,  concentrate 
in  Paris,  London,  and  Rome,  and  travel  about  the  world. 
It  is  to  these  large,  luxurious,  powerful  lives  that  the 
idealist  naturally  turns.  Their  motor-cars,  their  aero- 
planes, their  steam  yachts,  will  awaken  terror  and  respect 
in  every  corner  of  the  globe.  Their  handsome  doings 
will  fill  the  papers.  They  will  patronize  the  arts  and 
literature,  while  at  the  same  time  mellowing  them  by 
eliminating  that  too  urgent  insistence  upon  contempo- 
rary fact  which  makes  so  much  of  what  is  done  to-day 
harsh  and  displeasing.  The  middle-class  tradition  will 
be  continued  by  a  class  of  stewards,  tenants,  managers 
and  foremen,  secretaries,  and  the  like,  respected  and 
respectful.  The  writer,  the  artist,  will  lead  fives  of 
comfortable  dependence,  a  fink  between  class  and  class, 
the  lowest  of  the  rich  man's  guests,  the  highest  of  his 
servants.  As  for  the  masses,  they  wifi  be  fed  with  a  sort 
of  careless  vigour  and  considerable  economy  from  the 
Chicago  stockyards,  and  by  agricultural  produce  trusts, 
big  breweries,  fresh-water  companies,  and  the  like ;  they 
wiU  be  organized  industriaUy  and  carefuUy  controUed. 


174  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

Their  spiritual  needs  will  be  provided  for  by  churches 
endowed  by  the  wealthy,  their  physical  distresses  allevi- 
ated by  the  hope  of  getting  charitable  aid,  their  lives 
made  bright  and  adventurous  by  the  crumbs  of  sport 
that  fall  from  the  rich  man's  table.  They  will  crowd  to 
see  the  motor-car  races,  the  aeroplane  competitions. 
It  will  be  a  world  rich  in  contrasts  and  not  without  its 
bright  gleam  of  pure  adventure.  Every  bright  young 
fellow  of  capacity  will  have  the  hope  of  catching  the  eye 
of  some  powerful  personage,  of  being  advanced  to  some 
high  position  of  trust,  of  even  ending  his  days  as  a  part- 
ner, a  subordinate  assistant  Plutocrat.  Or  he  may  win 
a  quite  agreeable  position  by  literary  or  artistic  merit. 
A  pretty  girl,  a  clever  woman  of  the  middle  class,  would 
have  before  her  even  more  brilliant  and  romantic  pos- 
sibilities. 

There  can  be  no  denying  the  promises  of  colour  and 
eventfulness  a  Plutocracy  holds  out,  and  though  they 
do  not  attract  me,  I  can  quite  understand  their  appeal 
to  the  more  ductile  and  appreciative  mind  of  Mr.  Mal- 
lock.  But  there  are  countervailing  considerations. 
There  is,  it  is  said,  a  tendency  in  Plutocracies  either  to 
become  unprogressive,  unenterprising,  and  stagnantly 
autocratic,  or  to  develop  states  of  stress  and  discontent, 
and  so  drift  toward  Csesarism,  The  latter  was  the  fate 
of  the  Roman  Republic,  and  may  perhaps  be  the  destiny 


THE  MIDDLE-CLASS  MAN  AND  SOCIALISM       175 

of  the  budding  young  Plutocracy  of  America.  But  the 
developing  British  Plutocracy,  like  the  Carthaginian, 
will  be  largely  Semitic  in  blood,  and  like  the  Carthaginian 
may  resist  these  insurgent  tendencies. 

So  much  for  the  Plutocratic  possibility.  If  the  middle- 
class  man  on  any  account  does  not  like  that  outlook,  he 
can  turn  in  the  other  direction;  and  then  he  will  find 
fine  promises  indeed,  but  much  more  uncertainty  than 
toward  Plutocracy.  Plutocracies  the  world  has  seen 
before,  but  a  democratic  civilization  organized  upon 
the  lines  laid  down  by  modern  Socialists  would  be  a  new 
beginning  in  the  world's  history.  It  is  not  a  thing  that 
will  come  about  by  itself ;  it  will  have  to  be  the  outcome 
of  a  sustained  moral  and  intellectual  effort  in  the  com- 
munity. If  there  is  not  that  effort,  if  things  go  on  as 
they  are  going  now,  the  coming  of  a  Plutocracy  is  inevi- 
table. That  effort,  I  am  convinced,  cannot  be  success- 
fully made  by  the  lower-class  man  alone ;  from  him,  un- 
aided and  unguided,  there  is  nothing  to  be  expected  but 
wild  convulsive  attempts  at  social  upheaval,  which, 
whether  they  succeed  (as  the  French  Revolution  did) 
or  fail  (as  did  the  insurrectionary  outbreaks  of  the  Re- 
public in  Rome),  lead  ultimately  to  a  Napoleon  or  a 
Caesar,  But  our  contemporary  civilization  is  unprece- 
dented in  the  fact  that  the  whole  population  now  reads, 
and  that  intelligence  and  free  discussion  saturate  the 


176  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

whole  mass.  Only  time  can  show  what  possibilities  of 
understanding,  leadership,  and  political  action  lie  in  our 
new  generation  of  the  better-educated  middle  class. 
Will  it  presently  begin  to  define  a  line  for  itself  ?  Will 
it  remain  disorganized  and  passive,  or  will  it  become  in- 
telligent and  decisive  between  these  millstones  of  the 
organized  property  and  the  organizing  state,  between 
Plutocracy  and  Socialism,  whose  opposition  is  the  su- 
preme social  and  political  fact  in  the  world  at  the  present 
time? 


CHAPTER  IX 

SOME  OBJECTIONS  TO  SOCIALISM 
§1 

In  the  preceding  eight  chapters  I  have  sought  to 
give  as  plain  and  full  an  account  of  the  great  generaliza- 
tions of  Socialism  as  I  can  and  to  make  it  clear  exactly 
what  these  generalizations  convey,  and  how  far  they 
go  in  this  direction  and  that.  Before  we  go  on  to  a  brief 
historical  and  anticipatory  account  of  the  actual  Social- 
ist movement,  it  may  be  worth  while  to  take  up  and 
consider  compactly  the  chief  objections  that  are  urged 
against  the  general  propositions  of  Socialism  in  popular 
discussion. 

Now  a  very  large  proportion  of  these  arise  out  of  the 
commonest  vice  of  the  human  mind,  its  disposition  to  see 
everything  as  "yes"  or  "no,"  as  "black"  or  "white,"  its 
impatience,  its  incapacity  for  a  fine  discrimination  of 
intermediate  shades.^  The  queer  old  scholastic  logic 
still  prevails  remarkably  in  our  modern  world;  you 
find  Mr.  Mallock,  for  example,  going  about  arranging 

'  See  Scepticism  of  the  Instrument,  the  Appendix  to  A  Modern 
Utopia.     (Chapman  and  Hall.) 

N  177 


178  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

his  syllogisms,  extracting  his  opponent's  "self-contra- 
dictions," and  disposing  with  stupendous  self-satisfac- 
tion of  Socialism  in  all  the  magazines.  He  disposes 
of  Socialism  quite  in  the  spirit  of  the  young  mediaeval 
scholar  returning  home  to  prove  beyond  dispute  that 
"my  cat  has  ten  tails"  and,  given  a  yard's  start,  that  a 
tortoise  can  always  keep  ahead  of  a  running  man.  The 
essential  fallacy  is  always  to  declare  that  either  a  thing 
is  A  or  it  is  not  A;  either  a  thing  is  green  or  it  is  not 
green;  either  a  thing  is  heavy  or  it  is  not  heavy.  Un- 
thinking people,  and  some  who  ought  to  know  better, 
fall  into  that  trap.  They  dismiss  from  their  minds  the 
fact  that  there  is  a  tinge  of  green  in  nearly  every  object 
in  the  world,  and  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  pure 
green,  unless  it  be  just  one  line  or  so  in  the  long  series 
of  the  spectrum ;  they  forget  that  the  lightest  thing  has 
weight  and  that  the  heaviest  thing  can  be  lifted.  The 
rest  of  the  process  is  simple  and  has  no  relation  whatever 
to  the  realities  of  life.  They  agree  to  some  hard  and  fast 
impossible  definition  of  Socialism,  permit  the  exponent 
to  extract  absurdities  therefrom  as  a  conjurer  gets  rab- 
bits from  a  hat,  and  retire  with  a  conviction  that  on  the 
whole  it  is  well  to  have  had  this  disturbing  matter 
settled  once  for  all. 

For  example,  the  anti-Socialist  declares  that  Socialism 
"abolishes  property."    He  makes  believe  there  is  a  hard 


SOME   OBJECTIONS  TO   SOCIALISM  179 

absolute  thing  called  "property,"  which  must  either  be 
or  not  be,  which  is  now  and  which  will  not  be  under 
Socialism,  To  any  person  with  a  philosophical  educa- 
tion this  is  a  ridiculous  mental  process,  but  it  seems 
perfectly  rational  to  an  untrained  mind  —  and  that  is 
the  usual  case  with  the  anti-Socialist.  Having  achieved 
this  initial  absurdity,  he  then  asks  in  a  tone  of  bitter 
protest  whether  a  man  may  not  sleep  in  his  own  bed,  and 
is  he  to  do  nothing  if  he  finds  a  coal-heaver  already  in 
possession  when  he  retires?  This  is  the  method  of  Mr. 
G.  R.  Sims,  that  delightful  writer,  who  from  altitudes  of 
exhaustive  misunderstanding  tells  the  working-man  that 
under  Socialism  he  will  have  no  money  of  his  own,  no 
home  of  his  own,  no  wife  of  his  own,  no  children  of  his 
own !  It's  effective  nonsense  in  its  way  —  but  non- 
sense nevertheless.  In  my  preceding  chapters  I  hope 
I  have  made  it  clear  that  "property,"  even  to-day,  is  a 
very  qualified  and  uncertain  thing,  a  natural  vague  in- 
stinct capable  of  perversion  and  morbid  exaggeration 
and  needing  control,  and  that  Socialism  seeks  simply 
to  give  it  a  sharper,  juster,  and  rationally  limited  form  in 
relation  to  the  commonweal. 

Or  again,  the  opponent  has  it  that  Socialism  "abolishes 
the  family,"  and  with  it,  of  course,  "every  sacred  and 
tender  association,"  etc.  To  that  also  I  have  given  a 
chapter. 


180  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

I  do  not  think  much  Anti-Socialism  is  dishonest  in 
these  matters.  Anti-Socialism,  as  its  name  implies,  is 
no  alternative  doctrine ;  it  is  a  mental  resistance,  not  a 
mental  force.  For  the  most  part  one  is  dealing  with 
sheer  intellectual  incapacity;  with  people,  muddle- 
headed  perhaps,  but  quite  well-meaning,  who  are  really 
unable  to  grasp  the  quantitative  element  in  things. 
They  think  with  a  simple  flat  certitude  that  if,  for  ex- 
ample, a  doctor  says  quinine  is  good  for  a  case,  it  means 
that  he  wishes  to  put  every  ounce  of  quinine  that  can  be 
procured  into  his  patient,  to  focus  all  the  quinine  in  the 
world  upon  him ;  or  that  if  a  woman  says  she  likes  danc- 
ing, that  thereby  she  declares  her  intention  to  dance 
until  she  drops.  They  are  dear  lumpish  souls  who  like 
things  '' straightforward, "  as  they  say  —  all  or  nothing. 
They  think  qualifications  or  any  quantitative  treatment 
"quibbling,"  to  be  loudly  scorned,  bawled  down,  and  set 
aside. 

In  controversy  the  temptations  for  a  hot  and  generous 
temperament,  eager  for  victory,  to  misstate  and  over- 
state the  antagonist's  position  are  enormous,  and  the 
sensible  Socialist  must  allow  for  them  unless  he  is  to 
find  discussion  intolerable.  The  reader  of  the  pre- 
ceding chapters  should  know  exactly  how  Socialism 
stands  to  the  family  relations,  the  things  it  urges,  the 
things  it  regards  with  impartiality  or  patient  toleration, 


SOME  OBJECTIONS  TO   SOCIALISM  181 

the  things  it  leaves  alone.  The  preceding  chapters 
merely  summarize  a  literature  that  has  been  accessible 
for  years.  Yet  it  is  extraordinary  how  few  antagonists 
of  Socialism  seem  able  even  to  approach  these  questions 
in  a  rational  manner.  One  admirably  typical  critic  of 
a  pamphlet  in  which  I  propounded  exactly  the  same 
opinions  as  are  here  set  out  in  the  third  chapter  found 
great  comfort  in  the  expression  "brood  mares."  He 
took  hold  of  my  phrase  "State  family"  and  ran  wild 
with  it.  He  declared  it  to  be  my  intention  that  women 
were  no  longer  to  be  wives  but  "brood  mares"  for  the 
state.  Nothing  would  convince  him  that  this  was  a 
glaring  untruth.  His  mind  was  essentially  eques- 
trian. "Human  stud-farm"  was  another  of  his  ex- 
pressions.^ Ridicule  and  argument  failed  to  touch  him; 
I  believe  he  would  have  gone  to  the  stake  to  justify  his 
faith  that  Socialists  want  to  put  women  in  haras.  His 
thick-headedness  had,  indeed,  a  touch  of  the  heroic. 

Then  a  certain  Father  Phelan  of  St.  Louis,  no  doubt 
in  a  state  of  mental  exaltation  as  honest  as  it  was  in- 
discriminating,  told  the  world  through  the  columns  of 
an  American  magazine  that  I  wanted  to  tear  the  babe 

*  What  makes  the  expression  particularly  inappropriate  in  my 
case  is  the  fact  that  in  my  Mankind  in  the  Making  there  is  a  clearly 
reasoned  chapter  (Chapter  2)  which  has  never  been  answered 
in  which  I  discuss  and,  I  think,  conclusively  dispose  of  Mr.  Francis 
Galton's  ideas  of  Eugenics  and  deliberate  stirpiculture. 


182  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

from  the  mother's  breast  and  thrust  it  into  an  "In- 
stitution." He  said  worse  things  than  that,  but  I  set 
them  aside  as  pulpit  eloquence.  Some  readers,  no 
doubt,  knew  better  and  laughed,  but  many  were  quite 
sincerely  shocked,  and  resolved  after  that  to  give  So- 
cialism a  very  wide  berth  indeed.  Honi  soil  qui  mal  y 
pense;  the  revolting  ideas  that  disgusted  them  were 
not  mine,  they  came  from  some  hot,  dark  reservoir  of 
evil  thoughts  that  years  of  chastity  and  discipline  seem  to 
have  left  intact  in  Father  Phelan's  soul. 

The  error  in  all  these  cases  is  the  error  of  overstate- 
ment, of  getting  into  a  condition  of  confused  intellectual 
excitement,  and  because  a  critic  declares  your  window 
curtains  too  blue,  saying  therefore  and  usually  with  pas- 
sion that  he  wants  the  whole  universe,  sky  and  sea  in- 
cluded, painted  bright  orange.  The  inquirer  into  the 
question  of  Socialism  will  find  that  an  almost  incurable 
disease  of  these  controversies.  Again  and  again  he 
will  meet  with  it.  If  after  that  critic's  little  proposition 
about  your  window  curtains  he  chances  to  say  that  on 
the  whole  he  thinks  an  orange  sky  would  be  unpleasant, 
the  common  practice  is  to  accuse  him  of  not  "  sticking  to 
his  guns." 

My  friends  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  and  Mr.  Max  Beer- 
bohm,  those  brilliant  ornaments  of  our  age,  when  they 
chance  to  write  about  Socialism,  confess  this  universal 


SOME   OBJECTIONS  TO   SOCIALISM  183 

failing,  albeit  in  a  very  different  quality  and  measure. 
They  are  not,  it  is  true,  distressed  by  that  unwashed 
coal-heaver  who  haunts  the  now  private  bed  of  the 
common  anti-Socialist,  nor  have  they  any  horrid  vis- 
ion of  the  fathers  of  the  community  being  approved 
by  a  select  committee  of  the  County  Council  —  no 
doubt  wrapped  in  horse-cloths  and  led  out  by  their 
grooms  —  such  as  troubles  the  spurred  and  quivering 
soul  of  that  equestrian, — I  forget  his  name,  —  the"  brood- 
mare" gentleman  who  denounced  me  in  the  Pall  Mall 
Gazette;  but  their  souls  fly  out  in  a  passion  of  protest 
against  the  hints  of  discipline  and  order  the  advance- 
ment of  Socialism  reveals.  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  mocks 
valiantly  and  passionately,  I  know,  against  an  oppres- 
sive and  obstinately  recurrent  anticipation  of  himself 
in  Socialist  hands,  hair  clipped,  meals  of  a  strictly 
hygienic  description  at  regular  hours,  a  fine  for  laughing, 
not  that  he  would  want  to  laugh,  and  austere  exercises 
in  several  of  the  more  metallic  virtues  daily.  Mr.  Max 
Beerbohm's  conception  is  rather  in  the  nature  of  a  night- 
mare, a  hopeless,  horrid,  frozen  flight  from  the  pursuit 
of  Mr.  Sidney  Webb  and  myself,  both  of  us,  short,  in- 
elegant men,  but  for  all  that  terribly  resolute,  inde- 
fatigable, incessant,  to  capture  him,  to  drag  him  off  to 
a  mechanical  Utopia,  and  there  to  take  his  thumb-mark 
and  his  name,  number  him  distinctly  in  indelible  ink,  and 


184  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

let  him  loose  (under  inspection)  in  a  world  of  neat 
round  lakes  of  blue  lime-water  and  vistas  of  white 
sanitary  tiling. 

The  method  of  reasoning  in  all  these  cases  is  the  same : 
it  is  to  assume  that  whatever  the  Socialist  postulates  as 
desirable  is  wanted  without  limit  of  qualification;  to 
imagine  whatever  proposal  is  chosen  for  the  controversy 
is  to  be  carried  out  by  uncontrolled  monomaniacs,  and 
so  to  make  a  picture  of  the  Socialist  dream.  This  pic- 
ture is  presented  to  the  simple-minded  person  in  doubt 
with,  "This  is  Socialism.  Surely!  —  surely!  you 
don't  want  this !" 

And  occasionally  the  poor,  simple-minded  person  really 
is  overcome  by  these  imagined  terrors.  He  turns  back 
to  our  dingy  realities  again,  to  the  good  old  grimy  world 
he  knows,  thanking  God  beyond  measure  that  he  will 
never  live  to  see  the  hateful  day  when  one  baby  out  of 
every  four  ceases  to  die  in  our  manufacturing  towns, 
when  lives  of  sordid  care  are  banished  altogether  from  the 
earth,  and  when  the  "sense  of  humour"  and  the  cult  of 
Mark  Tapley  which  flourishes  so  among  these  things  will 
be  in  danger  of  perishing  from  disuse. 

But  the  reader  sees  now  what  Socialism  is  in  its  es- 
sentials, the  tempered  magnificence  of  the  constructive 
scheme  to  which  it  asks  him  to  devote  his  life.  It  is  a 
laborious,  immense  project  to  make  the  world  a  world 


SOME  OBJECTIONS  TO   SOCIALISM  185 

of  social  justice,  of  opportunity  and  full  living,  to  abolish 
waste,  to  abolish  the  lavish  unpremeditated  cruelty  of 
our  present  social  order.  Do  not  let  the  wit  or  perversity 
of  the  adversary  or,  what  is  often  a  far  worse  influence, 
the  zeal  and  overstatement  of  the  headlong  advocate, 
do  not  let  the  manifest  personal  deficiencies  of  this 
spokesman  or  that,  distract  you  from  the  living  heart  in 
Socialism,  its  broad  generosity  of  conception,  its  im- 
mense claim  in  kinship  and  direction  upon  your  Good 
Will. 

§2 

For  the  convenience  of  those  readers  who  are  in  the 
position  of  inquirers,  I  had  designed  at  this  point  a  sec- 
tion which  was  to  contain  a  list  of  the  chief  objections  to 
Socialism  other  than  mere  misrepresentations,  which  are 
current  nowadays.  I  had  meant  at  first  to  answer 
each  one  fully  and  gravely,  to  clear  them  all  up  ex- 
haustively and  finally  before  proceeding.  But  I  find 
now  upon  jotting  them  down,  that  they  are  for  the  most 
part  already  anticipated  by  the  preceding  chapters,  and 
so  I  will  note  them  here  very  compactly  indeed,  and 
make  but  the  briefest  comment  upon  each. 

There  is  first  the  assertion,  which  effectually  bars 
a  great  number  of  people  from  further  inquiry  into 
Socialism  teaching,  that  Socialism  is  contrary  to  Chris- 


186  NEW   WORLDS   FOR   OLD 

tianity.  I  would  urge  that  this  is  the  absolute  inver- 
sion of  the  truth.  Christianity  involves,  I  am  con- 
vinced, a  practical  Socialism  if  it  is  honestly  carried  out. 
This  is  not  only  my  conviction,  but  the  reader,  if  he  is 
a  Nonconformist,  can  find  it  set  out  at  length  by  Dr. 
Clifford  in  a  Fabian  tract,  Socialism  and  the  Teaching 
of  Christ,  and,  if  a  Churchman,  by  the  Rev.  Stewart 
Headlam  in  another.  Christian  Socialism.  It  is  said  that 
a  good  Catholic  of  the  Roman  Communion  cannot  also  be 
a  Socialist.  Even  this  very  general  persuasion  may  not 
be  correct.  I  believe  the  papal  prohibition  was  aimed 
entirely  at  a  specific  form  of  Socialism,  the  Socialism 
of  Marx,  Engels,  and  Bebel,  which  is,  I  must  admit,  un- 
fortunately strongly  anti-Christian  in  tone,  as  is  the 
Socialism  of  the  British  Social  Democratic  Federation 
to  this  day.  It  is  true  that  many  leaders  of  the  Socialist 
party  have  also  been  Secularists,  and  that  they  have 
mingled  their  theological  prejudices  with  their  political 
work.  This  is  the  case  not  only  in  Germany  and  Amer- 
ica, but  in  Great  Britain,  where  Mr.  Robert  Blatchford 
of  the  Clarion,  for  example,  has  also  carried  on  a  cam- 
paign against  Christianity.  But  this  is  only  the  inevi- 
table throwing  together  of  two  sets  of  ideas  because 
they  have  this  in  common,  that  they  run  counter  to  gen- 
erally received  opinions;  there  is  no  necessary  connec- 
tion.    Secularists   and   Socialists   get   thrown   together 


SOME  OBJECTIONS  TO   SOCIALISM  187 

and  classed  together  as  early  Christians  and  criminals  and 
rebels  against  the  emperor  were  no  doubt  thrown  to- 
gether in  the  Roman  jails.  They  had  this  much  in 
common,  that  they  were  in  conflict  with  what  most 
people  considered  to  be  right.  It  is  a  confusion  that 
needs  constant  explaining  away.  It  is  to  me  a  most 
lamentable  association  of  two  entirely  separate  thought- 
processes,  one  constructive  and  the  other  destructive, 
and  I  have  already,  in  Chapter  VI,  §  4,  done  my  best  to 
disavow  it. 

Socialism  is  pure  materialism,  it  seeks  only  physical 
well-being,  just  as  much  as  nursing  lepers  for  pity  and 
the  love  of  God  is  pure  materialism  that  seeks  only  physi- 
cal well-being. 

Socialism  advocates  free  love.  This  objection  I  have 
also  disposed  of  in  Chapter  VI,  §§2  and  4. 

Socialism  renders  love  impossible,  and  reduces  humanity 
to  the  condition  of  a  stud-farm.  This,  too,  has  been  al- 
ready dealt  with;  see  Chapter  III,  §§  2  and  5,  and 
Chapter  VI,  §§  2,  3,  and  4.  These  two  objections 
generally  occur  together  in  the  same  anti-Socialist  speech 
or  tract. 

Socialism  would  destroy  parental  responsibility.  This 
absurd  perversion  is  altogether  disposed  of  in  Chapter 
VI,  §  3.  It  is  a  direct  inversion  of  current  Socialist 
teaching. 


188  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 


§3 


Socialism  would  open  the  way  to  vast  public  corruption. 
This  is  flatly  opposed  to  the  experience  of  America, 
where  local  administration  has  been  as  little  Socialistic 
and  as  corrupt  as  anywhere  in  the  world.  Obviously,  in 
order  that  a  public  official  should  be  bribed,  there  must 
be  some  wealthy  person  outside  the  system  to  bribe  him 
and  with  an  interest  in  bribing  him.  When  you  have 
a  weak  administration  with  feeble  powers  and  resources 
and  strong,  unscrupulous  private  corporations  seeking  to 
override  the  law  and  public  welfare,  the  possibilities  of 
bribing  are  at  the  highest  point.  In  a  community  given 
over  to  the  pursuit  of  gain,  powerful  private  enterprises 
will  resort  to  corruption  to  get  and  protract  franchises, 
to  evade  penalties,  to  postpone  expropriation,  and  they 
will  do  it  systematically  and  successfully.  And  even 
where  there  is  partial  public  enterprise  and  a  competition 
among  contractors,  there  will  certainly  be,  at  least, 
attempts  at  corruption  to  get  contracts.  But  where  the 
whole  process  is  in  public  hands,  where  can  the  bribery 
creep  in  ?  Who  is  going  to  find  the  money  for  the  bribes, 
and  why? 

It  is  urged  that  in  another  direction  there  is  likely  to  be 
a  corruption  of  public  life  due  to  the  organized  voting  of 
the  employees  in  this  branch  of  the  public  service  or  that, 


SOME  OBJECTIONS  TO   SOCIALISM  189 

seeking  some  advantage  for  their  own  service.  This  is 
Lord  Avebury's  bogey/  Frankly,  such  voting  by  ser- 
vices is  highly  probable.  The  tramway  men  or  the  milk- 
service  men  may  think  they  are  getting  too  long  hours  or 
too  low  pay  in  comparison  with  the  teachers  or  the  men 
on  the  ocean  liners,  and  the  thing  may  affect  elections. 
That  is  only  human  nature,  and  the  point  to  bear  in  mind 
is  that  this  sort  of  thing  goes  on  to-day,  and  goes  on  with 
a  vigour  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  mild  possibilities 
of  a  Socialist  regime.  The  landowners  of  Great  Britain, 
for  example,  are  organized  in  the  most  formidable  man- 
ner against  the  general  interests  of  the  community,  and 
constantly  subordinate  the  interests  of  the  commonweal 
to  their  conception  of  justice  to  their  class;  the  big 
railways  are  equally  potent,  and  so  are  the  legal  profes- 
sion and  the  brewers.  But  to-day  these  political  in- 
terventions of  great  organized  services  athwart  the 
path  of  statesmanship  are  sustained  by  enormous  finan- 
cial resources.  The  state  employees  under  Socialism 
will  be  in  the  position  of  employing  one  another  and 
paying  one  another;  the  teacher,  for  example,  will  be 
educating  the  sons  of  the  tramway  men  up  to  the  re- 
quirements of  the  public  paymaster,  and  travelling  in 
the  trams  to  and  from  his  work;    there  will  be  close 

•  On    Municipal    and   National    Trading,  by  Lord    Avebury. 
(MacmUlan  and  Co.,  1907.) 


190  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

mutual  observation  and  criticism  therefore,  and  a 
strong  community  of  spirit,  and  that  will  put  very  defi- 
nite limits  indeed  upon  the  possibly  evil  influence  of  class 
and  service  interests  in  politics. 

Socialism  would  destroy  incentive  and  efficiency.  This 
is  dealt  with  in  Chapter  V  on  the  Spirit  of  Gain  and  the 
Spirit  of  Service. 

§4 

Socialism  would  destroy  freedom.  This  is  a  more  con- 
siderable difficulty.  To  begin  with,  it  may  be  necessary 
to  remind  the  reader  that  absolute  freedom  is  an  im- 
possibility.    As  I  have  written  in  my  Modern  Utopia :  — 

"The  idea  of  individual  liberty  is  one  that  has  grown  in 
importance  and  grows  with  every  development  of  modern 
thought.  To  the  classical  Utopists  freedom  was  relatively 
trivial.  Clearly  they  considered  virtue  and  happiness  as  en- 
tirely separable  from  liberty,  and  as  being  altogether  more 
important  things.  But  the  modern  view,  with  its  deepening  in- 
sistence upon  individuality  and  upon  the  significance  of  its 
uniqueness,  steadily  intensifies  the  value  of  freedom,  until  at 
last  we  begin  to  see  liberty  as  the  very  substance  of  life,  that 
indeed  it  is  life,  and  that  only  the  dead  things,  the  choiceless 
things  live  in  absolute  obedience  to  law.  To  have  free  play 
for  one's  individuality  is,  in  the  modern  view,  the  subjective 
triumph  of  existence,  as  survival  in  creative  work  and  offspring 
is  its  objective  triumph.  But  for  all  men,  since  man  is  a  social 
creature,  the  play  of  will  must  fall  short  of  absolute  freedom. 
Perfect  human  liberty  is  possible  only  to  a  despot  who  is  abso- 


SOME   OBJECTIONS  TO   SOCIALISM  191 

lutely  and  universally  obeyed.  Then  to  will  would  be  to  com- 
mand and  achieve,  and  within  the  limits  of  natural  law  we  could 
at  any  moment  do  exactly  as  it  pleased  us  to  do.  All  other 
liberty  is  a  compromise  between  our  own  freedom  of  will  and  the 
wills  of  those  with  whom  we  come  in  contact.  In  an  organized 
state  each  one  of  us  has  a  more  or  less  elaborate  code  of  what 
he  may  do  to  others  and  to  himself,  and  what  others  may  do  to 
him.  He  limits  others  by  his  rights  and  is  limited  by  the  rights 
of  others,  and  by  considerations  affecting  the  welfare  of  the 
community  as  a  whole. 

"Individual  liberty  in  a  community  is  not,  as  mathemati- 
cians would  say,  always  of  the  same  sign.  To  ignore  this  is 
the  essential  fallacy  of  the  cult  called  Individualism.  But 
in  truth,  a  general  prohibition  in  a  state  may  increase  the  sum  of 
liberty,  and  a  general  permission  may  diminish  it.  It  does  not 
follow,  as  these  people  would  have  us  believe,  that  a  man  is  more 
free  where  there  is  least  law  and  more  restricted  where  there  is 
most  law.  A  socialism  or  a  communism  is  not  necessarily  a 
slavery,  and  there  is  no  freedom  under  anarchy.  .  .  . 

"  It  follows,  therefore,  in  a  modern  Utopia,  which  finds  the  final 
hope  of  the  world  in  the  evolving  interplay  of  unique  individuali- 
ties, that  the  state  will  have  effectually  chipped  away  just  all 
those  spendthrift  liberties  that  waste  liberty,  and  not  one  liberty 
more,  and  so  have  attained  the  maximum  general  freedom." 

That  is  the  gist  of  the  Socialist's  answer  to  this  accu- 
sation. He  asks  what  freedom  is  there  to-day  for  the 
vast  majority  of  mankind  ?  They  are  free  to  do  nothing 
but  work  for  a  bare  subsistence  all  their  lives,  they  may 
not  go  freely  about  the  earth  even,  but  are  prosecuted 
for  trespassing  upon  the  health-giving  breast  of  our  uni- 


192  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

versal  mother.  Consider  the  clerks  and  girls  who  hurry 
to  their  work  of  a  morning  across  Brooklyn  Bridge  in 
New  York,  or  Hungerford  Bridge  in  London,  go  and 
see  them,  study  their  faces.  They  are  free,  with  a  free- 
dom Socialism  would  destroy.  Consider  the  poor  painted 
girls  who  pursue  bread  with  nameless  indignities  through 
our  streets  at  night.  They  are  free  by  the  current  stand- 
ard. And  the  poor  half-starved  wretches  struggling 
with  the  impossible  stint  of  oakum  in  a  casual  ward,  they, 
too,  are  free !  The  nimble  footman  is  free,  the  crushed 
porter  between  the  trucks  is  free,  the  woman  in  the  mill, 
the  child  in  the  mine.  Ask  them !  They  will  tell  you 
how  free  they  are.  They  have  happened  to  choose  these 
ways  of  living,  that  is  all.  No  doubt  the  piquancy  of  the 
life  attracts  them  in  many  such  cases. 

Let  us  be  frank;  —  a  form  of  Socialism  might  conceiv- 
ably exist  without  much  freedom,  with  hardly  more  free- 
dom than  that  of  a  British  worker  to-day.  A  State 
Socialism  tyrannized  over  by  officials,  who  might  be 
almost  as  bad  at  times  as  uncontrolled  small  employers, 
is  so  far  possible  that  in  Germany  it  is  practically  half- 
existent  now.  A  bureaucratic  Socialism  might  con- 
ceivably be  a  state  of  affairs  scarcely  less  detestable  than 
our  own.  I  will  not  deny  there  is  a  clear  necessity  of 
certain  addenda  to  the  wider  formulce  of  Socialism  if  we 
are  to  be  safeguarded  effectually  from  the  official.    We 


SOME   OBJECTIONS  TO   SOCIALISM  193 

need  free  speech,  free  discussion,  free  publication,  as 
essentials  for  a  wholesome  Socialist  state.  How  they 
may  be  maintained,  I  shall  discuss  in  a  later  chapter. 
But  these  admissions  do  not  justify  the  present  system. 
Socialism,  though  it  failed  to  give  us  freedom,  would  not 
destroy  anything  that  we  have  in  this  way.  We  want 
freedom  now,  and  we  have  it  not.  We  speak  of  freedom 
of  speech,  but  to-day,  in  innumerable  positions,  Socialist 
employees  who  declared  their  opinions  openly  would  be 
dismissed.  Then  again  in  religious  questions  there  is 
an  immense  amount  of  intolerance  and  suppression  of 
social  and  religious  discussion  to-day,  especially  in  our 
English  villages.  As  for  freedom  of  action,  most  of  us 
from  fourteen  to  the  grave  are  chased  from  even  the 
leisure  to  require  freedom  by  the  necessity  of  earning  a 
Hving.   .  .  . 

Socialism,  as  I  have  stated  it  thus  far,  and  as  it  is 
commonly  stated,  would  give  economic  liberty  to  men 
and  women  alike,  it  would  save  them  from  the  cruel 
urgency  of  need,  and  so  far  it  would  enormously  enlarge 
freedom,  but  it  does  not  guarantee  them  political  or  in- 
tellectual liberty.  That  I  frankly  admit  and  accept  as 
one  of  the  incompletenesses  of  contemporary  Socialism. 
I  conceive,  therefore,  as  I  shall  explain  at  length  in  a 
later  chapter,  that  it  is  necessary  to  supplement  such 
Socialism  as  is  currently  received  by  certain  new  propo- 


194  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

sitions.  But  to  admit  that  Socialism  does  not  guarantee 
freedom,  is  not  to  admit  that  Sociahsm  will  destroy  it. 
It  is  possible,  given  certain  conditions,  for  men  to  be  nearly 
absolutely  free  in  speech,  in  movement,  in  conduct,  enor- 
mously free,  that  is,  as  compared  with  our  present  con- 
ditions, in  a  Socialist  state  established  upon  the  two 
great  propositions  I  have  formulated  in  Chapters  III 
and  IV.  So  that  the  statement  that  Socialism  will 
destroy  freedom  is  a  baseless  one  of  no  value  as  a  gen- 
eral argument  against  the  Socialist  idea. 

§5 

Socialism  would  reduce  life  to  one  monotonous  dead 
level!  This  in  a  world  in  which  the  majority  of  people 
live  in  cheap  cottages,  villa  residences,  and  tenement 
houses,  read  halfpenny  newspapers,  and  wear  ready- 
made  clothes ! 

Socialism  would  destroy  art,  invention,  and  literature. 
I  do  not  know  why  this  objection  is  made,  unless  it 
be  that  the  objectors  suppose  that  artists  will  not  create, 
inventors  will  not  think,  and  no  one  write  or  sing  except 
to  please  a  wealthy  patron.  Without  his  opulent  smile 
where  would  they  be  ?  Well,  do  not  let  us  be  ungrateful ; 
the  arts  owe  much  to  patronage.  Go  to  Venice,  go  to 
Florence,  and  you  will  find  a  glorious  harvest  of  pictures 


SOME  OBJECTIONS  TO   SOCIALISM  195 

and  architecture,  sown  and  reaped  by  a  mercantile  plu- 
tocracy. But  then  in  Rome,  in  Athens,  you  will  find  an 
equal  accumulation  made  under  very  different  condi- 
tions. Reach  a  certain  phase  of  civilization,  a  certain 
leisure  and  wealth,  and  art  will  out,  however  the  wealth 
may  be  distributed.  In  certain  sumptuous  directions 
art  flourishes  now,  and  would  certainly  flourish  less  in  a 
Socialist  state;  in  the  gear  of  ostentatious  luxury,  in 
private  furniture  of  all  sorts,  in  palace  building,  in  the 
exquisite  confections  of  costly  feminine  adornment,  in 
the  luxurious  binding  of  books,  in  the  cooking  of  larks,  in 
the  distinguished  portraiture  of  undistinguished  persons, 
in  the  various  refinements  of  prostitution,  in  the  subtle 
accommodations  of  mystic  theology,  in  jewellery.  It  is 
quite  conceivable  that  in  such  departments  Socialism  will 
discourage  and  limit  aesthetic  and  intellectual  effort. 
But  no  mercantile  plutocracy  could  ever  have  produced 
a  Gothic  cathedral,  a  folk-lore,  a  gracious  natural  type 
of  cottage  or  beautiful  clothing  for  the  common  people, 
and  no  mercantile  plutocracy  will  ever  tolerate  a  litera- 
ture of  power.  If  the  coming  of  Socialism  destroys  art, 
it  will  also  create  arts ;  the  architecture  of  private  palaces 
will  give  place  to  an  architecture  of  beautiful  common 
homes,  cottages,  and  colleges,  and  to  a  splendid  develop- 
ment of  public  buildings ;  the  Sargents  of  Socialism  will 
paint   famous    people    instead  of    milhonaires'   wives; 


196  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

poetry  and  popular  romantic  literature  will  revive.  For 
my  own  part  I  have  no  doubt  where  the  balance  of  ad- 
vantage lies. 

It  seems  reasonable  to  look  to  the  literary  and  artistic 
people  themselves  for  a  little  guidance  in  this  matter. 
Well,  we  had  in  the  nineteenth  century  an  absolute 
revolt  of  artists  against  Individualism.  The  proportion 
of  open  and  declared  Socialists  among  the  great  \ATiters, 
artists,  playwrights,  critics,  of  the  Victorian  period  was 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  number  of  Socialists  in  the 
general  population.  Wilde  in  his  Soul  of  Man  under 
Socialism,  Ruskin  in  many  volumes  of  imperishable 
prose,  Morris  in  all  his  later  life,  have  witnessed  to  the 
unending  protest  of  the  artistic  spirit  against  the  rule  of 
gain. 

Even  this  Individualistic  country  of  ours,  after  the 
shameful  shock  of  the  great  exhibition  of  1851,  decided 
that  it  could  no  longer  leave  art  to  private  enterprise, 
and  organized  that  systematic  government  Art  Teach- 
ing, that  has,  in  spite  of  its  many  defects,  revolutionized 
the  aesthetic  quality  of  this  country.  And  so  far  as 
research  and  invention  go,  one  may  very  reasonably 
appeal  to  such  an  authority  on  the  other  side,  as  the 
late  Mr.  Beit,  of  Wernher,  Beit  and  Co.  The  out- 
come of  his  experience  as  an  individualist  financier  was 
to  convince  him  that  the  only  way  to  raise  the  standard 


SOME  OBJECTIONS  TO  SOCIALISM  197 

of  technical  science  in  England  was  by  the  endowment 
of  public  teaching,  and  the  huge  "London  Charlotten- 
burg"  rises  out  of  his  conviction.  Even  Messrs. 
Rockefeller  and  Carnegie  admit  the  failure  of  Indi- 
vidualism in  this  matter  by  pouring  money  into  public 
universities  and  public  libraries.  All  these  heads 
of  the  commercial  process  confess  by  these  acts  what 
this  objection  of  the  inexperienced  denies,  the  power 
of  the  state  to  develop  art,  invention,  and  knowledge; 
the  necessity  that  this  duty  should  be  done  if  not  by, 
then  at  any  rate  through,  the  state. 

Socialism  may  very  seriously  change  the  direction  of 
intellectual  and  aesthetic  endeavour,  that  one  admits. 
But  there  is  no  reason  whatever  for  supposing  it  will  not, 
and  there  are  countless  reasons  for  supposing  that  it 
will,  enormously  increase  the  opportunities  and  en- 
couragements for  aesthetic  and  intellectual  endeavour. 

§6 

Socialism  would  arrest  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  Here 
is  an  objection  from  quite  a  new  quarter.  It  is  the 
stock  objection  of  the  science  student.  Hitherto  we 
have  considered  religious  and  aesthetic  difficulties,  but 
this  is  the  difficulty  of  the  mind  that  realizes  clearly  the 
nature  of  the  biological  process,  the  secular  change  in 


198  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

every  species  under  the  influence  of  its  environment, 
and  is  most  concerned  with  that.  Species,  it  is  said, 
change  —  and  the  student  of  the  elements  of  science  is 
too  apt  to  conclude  that  this  change  is  always  ascent  in 
the  scale  of  being  —  by  the  killing  off  of  the  individuals 
out  of  harmony  with  the  circumstances  under  which  the 
species  is  living.  This  is  not  quite  true.  The  truer 
statement  is  that  species  change  because,  allowing  for 
chance  and  individual  exceptions,  only  those  individu- 
als survive  to  reproduce  themselves  who  are  fairly  well 
adjusted  to  the  conditions  of  life;  so  that  in  each  genera- 
tion there  is  only  a  small  proportion  of  births  out  of 
harmony  with  these  conditions.  This  sounds  very  like 
the  previous  proposition,  but  it  differs  in  this  that  the 
accent  is  shifted  from  the  "killing"  to  the  suppression 
of  births ;  that  is  the  really  important  fact.  In  any  case, 
then,  the  believer  in  evolution  believes  that  the  qualities 
encouraged  by  the  environment  increase  in  the  species 
and  the  qualities  discouraged  diminish.  The  qualities 
that  have  survival  value  are  not  always  what  we  human 
beings  consider  admirable ;  that  is  a  consideration  many 
science  students  fail  to  grasp.  The  remarkable  habits 
of  all  the  degenerating  Crustacea,  for  example,  the  appe- 
tite of  the  vulture,  the  unpleasing  personality  of  the 
common  hyena,  —  all  that  less  charming  side  of  Mother 
Nature  that  her  scandalized  children  may  read  of  in 


SOME  OBJECTIONS  TO   SOCIALISM  199 

Cobbold's  Human  Parasites,  —  are  the  result  of  survival 
under  the  pressure  of  environment,  just  as  much  as  the 
human  eye  or  the  wing  of  an  eagle.  Let  the  objector 
therefore  ask  himself  what  sort  of  "fittest"  are  surviving 
now. 

The  plain  answer  is  that  under  our  present  conditions 
the  Breeding-getter  wins,  the  man  who  can  hold  and  keep 
and  reproduce  his  kind.  People  with  the  instinct  of 
owning  stronger  than  any  other  instinct  float  out  upon 
the  top  of  our  seething  mass,  and  flourish  there.  Aggres- 
sive, intensely  acquisitive,  reproductive  people  —  the 
ignoble  sort  of  Jew  is  the  very  type  of  it  —  are  the  peo- 
ple who  will  prevail  in  a  social  system  based  on  private 
property  and  mercantile  competition.  No  creative 
power,  no  nobility,  no  courage  can  battle  against  them. 
And  below  in  the  slums  and  factories,  what  will  be 
going  on?  The  survival  of  a  race  of  stunted  toilers, 
with  great  resisting  power  to  infection,  contagion,  and 
fatigue,  omnivorous  as  rats. 

Don't  imagine  that  the  high  infantile  deathrate  of  our 
manufacturing  centres  spares  the  fine  big  children.  It 
does  not.  Here  is  the  effectual  answer  to  that.  It  is 
taken  from  the  Report  of  the  Education  Committee  of 
the  London  County  Council  for  the  year  1905,  and  it  is 
part  of  an  account  of  an  inquiry  conducted  by  the  head- 
master of  one  school  in  a  poor  neighbourhood. 


200  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

"The  object  of  the  inquiry  was  to  discover  the  causes  of 
variation  in  the  physical  condition  of  children  within  the  limits 
of  this  single  school.  Each  of  the  405  boys  was  carefully 
weighed  and  measured  without  boots,  a  note  was  made  of  the  con- 
dition of  the  teeth,  and  a  general  estimate  of  the  personal  clean- 
liness and  sufficiency  of  clothing  as  a  basis  for  determining  the 
home  conditions  of  neglect  or  otherwise  from  external  evidence. 
The  teacher  of  each  class  added  an  estimate  of  mental  capacity." 
[Here  follow  tabular  arrangement  of  results,  and  height  and 
weight  charts.] 

" .  .  .  It  may  be  noted  in  the  heights  and  weights  for  each  age 
that  the  curve  is  not  a  continuous  line  of  growth,  but  that  at 
some  ages  it  springs  nearer  to,  and  at  others  sinks  further  from, 
the  normal.  The  greatest  effect  upon  the  life  capital  of  the 
population  is  produced  by  the  infantile  mortality,  which  in  some 
years  actually  kills  off  during  the  first  year  one  in  five  of  all  chil- 
dren born ;  the  question  naturally  arises  what  is  its  effect  upon 
the  survivors  —  do  the  weakly  ones  get  killed  off  and  only  the 
strong  muddle  through,  or  does  the  adverse  environment  which 
slaughters  one  in  five  have  a  maiming  effect  upon  those  left? 
.  .  .  When  the  infantile  mortality  for  the  parish  in  which  the 
school  is  situate  was  charted  above  the  physique  curve,  an  ab- 
solute correspondence  is  to  be  observed.  The  children  born  in 
a  year  when  infantile  mortality  is  low  show  an  increased  phy- 
sique, rising  nearest  to  the  normal  in  the  extraordinary  good  year 
1892;  and  those  born  in  the  years  of  high  mortality  show  a  de- 
creased physique.  ...  It  appears  certain,  therefore,  that  in 
years  of  high  infantile  mortality  the  conditions,  to  which  one  in 
five  or  six  of  the  children  born  are  sacrificed,  have  a  maiming 
effect  upon  the  other  four  or  five." 

The  fine  big  children  are  horn  in  periods  of  low  infan- 
tile mortality,  that  is  the  essential  point. 


SOME  OBJECTIONS  TO  SOCIALISM  201 

So  that  anyhow,  since  the  fittest  under  present  con- 
ditions is  manifestly  the  ratlike,  the  survival  of  the  fit- 
test that  is  going  on  now  is  one  that  it  is  highly  desirable 
to  stop  as  soon  as  possible,  and  so  far  Socialism  will 
arrest  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  But  that  does  not 
mean  that  it  will  stop  the  development  of  the  species 
altogether.  It  will  merely  shift  the  incidence  of  selec- 
tion and  rejection  to  a  new  set  of  qualities.  I  think 
I  have  already  hinted  (Chapter  VI,  §  2)  that  a  state  that 
pays  for  the  children  born  into  it  will  do  its  best  to  secure 
good  births.  That  implies  a  distinct  bar  to  the  mar- 
riage and  reproduction  of  the  halt  and  the  blind,  the 
bearers  of  transmissible  diseases,  and  the  like.  And 
women,  being  economically  independent,  will  have  a  far 
freer  choice  in  wedlock  than  they  have  now.  Now  they 
must  in  practice  marry  men  who  can  more  or  less  keep 
them,  they  must  subordinate  every  other  consideration 
to  that.  Under  Socialism  they  will  certainly  look  less 
to  a  man's  means  and  acquisitive  gifts,  and  more  to  the 
finer  qualities  of  his  personality.  They  wiU  prefer  promi- 
nent men,  able  men,  fine,  vigorous  and  attractive  per- 
sons. There  will  indeed  be  far  more  freedom  of  choice 
on  either  side  than  under  the  sordid  conditions  of  the 
present  time.  I  submit  that  such  a  free  choice  is  far 
more  likely  to  produce  a  secular  increase  in  the  beauty, 
in  intellectual  and  physical  activity  and  in  the  capa- 


202  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

city  of  the  race,  than   our   present  haphazard   mer- 
cenariness. 

The  science  student  will  be  interested  to  read  in  this 
connection  The  Ethic  of  Free  Thought,  Socialism  in 
Theory  and  Practice,  and  The  Chances  of  Death  and  other 
Studies  in  Evolution,  by  Karl  Pearson. 

§7 

Socialism  is  against  human  nature.  This  objection  I 
have  left  until  last  because  firstly  it  is  absolutely  true, 
and  secondly  it  leads  naturally  to  the  newer  ideas  that 
have  already  peeped  out  once  or  twice  in  my  earlier 
chapters  and  which  will  now  ride  up  to  a  predominance 
in  what  follows  and  particularly  the  idea  that  an  edu- 
cational process  and  a  moral  discipline  are  not  only  a  nec- 
essary part,  but  the  most  fundamental  part  of  any  com- 
plete Socialist  scheme.  Socialism  is  against  human 
nature.  That  is  true,  and  it  is  equally  true  of  everything 
else ;  capitalism  is  against  human  nature,  competition  is 
against  human  nature,  cruelty,  kindness,  religion  and 
doubt,  monogamy,  polygamy,  celibacy,  decency,  in- 
decency, piety,  and  sin  are  all  against  human  nature. 
The  present  system  in  particular  is  against  human 
nature,  or  what  is  the  policeman  for,  the  soldier,  the  debt- 
collector,  the  judge,  the  hangman?  What  means  the 
glass  along  my  neighbour's  wall?    Human  nature  is 


SOME  OBJECTIONS  TO  SOCIALISM  203 

against  human  nature.  For  human  nature  is  in  a  per- 
petual conflict ;  it  is  the  Ishmael  of  the  Universe,  against 
everything,  and  with  everything  against  it;  and  within, 
no  more  and  no  less  than  a  perpetual  battleground  of 
passion,  desire,  cowardice,  indolence,  and  good  will. 
So  that  our  initial  proposition,  as  it  stands  at  the  head 
of  this  section,  is  as  an  argument  against  Socialism,  just 
worth  nothing  at  all. 

None  the  less  valuable  is  it  as  a  reminder  of  the  essen- 
tial constructive  task  of  which  the  two  primary  gener- 
alizations of  Socialism  we  have  so  far  been  developing 
are  but  the  outward  and  visible  forms.  There  is  no 
naturalness  in  Socialism,  no  uneducated  pristine  force  on 
our  side.  I  have  tried  to  let  it  become  apparent  that 
while  I  do  firmly  believe,  not  only  in  the  splendour  and 
nobility  of  the  Socialist  dream,  but  in  its  ultimate  prac- 
ticality, I  do  also  recognize  quite  clearly  that  with  people 
just  as  they  are  now,  with  their  prejudices,  their  ig- 
norances, their  misapprehensions,  their  unchecked  vani- 
ties and  greeds  and  jealousies,  their  untutored  and  mis- 
guided instincts,  their  irrational  traditions,  no  Socialist 
state  can  exist,  no  better  state  can  exist,  than  the  one 
we  have  now  with  all  its  squalor  and  cruelty.  Every 
change  in  human  institutions  must  happen  concurrently 
with  a  change  in  ideas.  Upon  this  plastic,  uncertain, 
teachable  thing  human  nature,  within  us  and  without, 


204  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

we  have  if  we  really  contemplate  Socialism  as  our  achieve- 
ment, to  impose  guiding  ideas  and  guiding  habits,  we 
have  to  coordinate  all  the  Good  Will  that  is  active  or  la- 
tent in  our  world  in  one  constructive  plan.  To-day  the 
spirit  of  humanity  is  lost  to  itself,  divided,  dispersed,  and 
hidden  in  little  narrow  distorted  circles  of  thought. 
These  divided,  misshapen  circles  of  thought  are  not 
"human  nature,"  but  human  nature  has  fallen  into  these 
forms  and  has  to  be  released.  Our  fundamental  busi- 
ness is  to  develop  the  human  spirit.  It  is  in  the  enlarge- 
ment and  enrichment  of  the  average  circle  of  thought 
that  the  essential  work  and  method  of  Socialism  is  to  be 
found. 


CHAPTER  X 

SOCIALISM  A   DEVELOPING  DOCTRINE 
§1 

So  far  we  have  been  discussing  the  broad  elementary 
propositions  of  modern  SociaHsm.  As  we  have  dealt 
with  them,  they  amount  to  little  more  than  a  sketch  of 
the  foundation  for  a  great  scheme  of  social  reconstruc- 
tion. It  would  be  a  poor  service  to  Socialism  to  pretend 
that  this  scheme  is  complete.  From  this  point  onward 
one  enters  upon  a  series  of  less  unanimous  utterances 
and  more  questionable  suggestions.  Concerning  much 
of  what  follows,  Socialism  has  as  yet  not  elaborated  its 
teaching.  It  has  to  do  so,  it  is  doing  so,  but  huge 
labours  lie  before  its  servants.  Before  it  can  achieve  any 
full  measure  of  realization,  it  has  to  overcome  problems  at 
present  but  half  solved,  problems  at  present  scarcely 
touched,  the  dark  unsettling  suggestion  of  problems  that 
still  await  formulation.  The  anti-Socialist  is  freely 
welcome  to  all  these  admissions.  No  doubt  they  will 
afford  grounds  for  some  cheap  transitory  triumph. 
They  affect  our  great  generalizations  not  at  all;    they 

205 


206     .  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

detract  nothing  from  the  fact  that  Socialism  is  the 
most  inspiring,  creative  scheme  that  ever  came  into  the 
chaos  of  human  affairs.  The  fact  that  it  is  not  cut  and 
dried,  that  the  scheme  Hves  and  grows,  that  every  honest 
adherent  adds  not  only  to  its  forces  but  to  its  thought  and 
spirit,  is  itself  inspiration. 

The  new  adherent  to  Socialism  in  particular  must 
bear  this  in  mind,  that  Socialism  is  no  garment  cut  and 
finished  that  we  can  reasonably  ask  the  world  to  wear 
forthwith.  It  is  not  that  its  essentials  remain  in  doubt, 
it  is  not  that  it  does  not  stand  for  things  supremely  true, 
but  that  its  proper  method  and  its  proper  expedients  have 
still  to  be  established.  Over  and  above  the  propaganda 
of  its  main  constructive  ideas  and  the  political  work  for 
their  more  obvious  and  practical  application,  an  im- 
mense amount  of  intellectual  work  remains  to  be  done 
for  Socialism.  The  battle  of  Socialism  is  to  be  fought 
not  simply  at  the  polls  and  in  the  market-place,  but  at  the 
writing  desk  and  in  the  study.  To  many  questions, 
the  attitude  of  Sociahsm  to-day  is  one  of  confessed 
inquiring  imperfection.^  It  would  indeed  be  very  re- 
markable if  a  proposition  for  changes  so  vast  and  com- 

'  The  student  will  find  very  clear,  informing,  and  suggestive 
reading  in  Kirkup's  History  of  Socialism.  (A.  and  C.  Black,  1906.) 
A  fine  impartial  account  of  these  developments  which  may  be  used 
as  a  correction  (or  confirmation)  for  this  book. 


SOCIALISM   A  DEVELOPING    DOCTRINE  207 

prehensive  as  Socialism  advances  was  in  any  different 
state  at  this  present  time. 

It  is  so  recently  as  1835  that  the  world  first  heard  the 
word  SociaHsm.  It  appeared  then,  with  the  vaguest  im- 
plications and  the  most  fluctuating  definition,  as  a  general 
term  for  a  disconnected  series  of  protests  against  the  ex- 
treme theories  of  Individualism  and  Individualist  Political 
Economy;  against  the  cruel,  race-destroying,  industrial 
spirit  that  then  dominated  the  world.  Of  these  protests 
the  sociological  suggestions  and  experiments  of  Robert 
Owen  were  most  prominent  in  the  English  community, 
and  he  it  is,  more  than  any  other  single  person,  whom 
we  must  regard  as  the  father  of  Socialism.  But  in 
France,  ideas  essentially  similar  were  appearing  about 
such  movements  and  personalities  as  those  of  Saint 
Simon,  Proudhon,  and  Fourier,  They  were  part  of  a 
vast  system  of  questionings  and  repudiations,  political 
doubts,  social  doubts,  hesitating  inquiries,  and  ex- 
periments. 

It  is  only  to  be  expected  that  early  Socialism  should 
now  appear  as  not  only  an  extremely  imperfect  but  a 
very  inconsistent  system  of  proposals.  Its  value  lay 
not  so  much  in  its  plans  as  in  its  hopeful  and  confident 
denials.  It  had  hold  of  one  great  truth,  it  moved  one 
great  amendment  to  the  conception  of  practical  human 
equality  the  French  Revolution  had  formulated,  and  that 


208  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

was  its  clear  indication  of  the  evil  of  unrestricted  private 
property  and  of  the  necessary  antagonism  of  the  interests 
of  the  individual  to  the  commonweal  that  went  with  that. 
While  most  men  had  to  go  propertyless  in  a  world  that 
was  privately  owned,  the  assertion  of  equality  was  an 
empty  lie.  For  the  rest,  primordial  Socialism  was  en- 
tirely sketchy  and  experimental.  It  was  wild  as  the 
talk  of  schoolboys.  It  disregarded  the  most  obvious 
needs.  It  did  not  provide  for  any  principle  of  govern- 
ment, or  for  the  maintenance  of  collective  thought  and 
social  determination;  it  offered  no  safeguards  and 
guarantees  for  even  the  most  elementary  privacies  and 
freedoms;  it  was  extraordinarily  not-constructive.  It 
was  extreme  in  its  proposed  abolition  of  the  home,  and 
it  flatly  ignored  the  huge  process  of  transition  needed 
for  a  change  so  profound  and  universal. 

The  early  Socialism  was  immediately  revolutionary. 
It  had  no  patience.  The  idea  was  to  be  made  into  a 
definite  project  forthwith;  Fourier  drew  up  his  compact 
scheme,  arranged  how  many  people  should  live  in  each 
phalange,  and  so  forth,  and  all  that  remained  to  do,  he 
thought,  was  to  sow  phalanges  as  one  scatters  poppy  seed. 
With  him  it  was  to  be  Socialism  by  contagion ;  with  many 
of  his  still  hastier  contemporaries  it  was  to  be  Socialism 
by  proclamation.  All  the  evils  of  society  were  to  crumble 
to  ruins  like  the  Walls  of  Jericho  at  the  first  onset  of  the 
Great  Idea. 


SOCIALISM   A  DEVELOPING    DOCTRINE  209 

Our  present  generation  is  less  buoyant,  perhaps,  but 
wiser.  However  young  you  may  be  as  a  reformer,  you 
know  you  must  face  certain  facts  these  early  Socialists 
ignored.  Whatever  sort  of  community  you  dream  of 
you  realize  that  it  has  to  be  made  of  the  sort  of  people  you 
meet  every  day  or  of  the  children  growing  up  under 
their  influence.  The  damping  words  of  the  old  philoso- 
pher to  the  ardent  social  reformer  of  seventeen  were 
really  the  quintessence  of  our  criticism  of  revolutionary 
Socialism:  "Will  your  aunts  join  us,  my  dear?  No! 
Well,  is  the  grocer  on  our  side  ?  And  the  family  solicitor  ? 
We  shall  have  to  provide  for  them  all,  you  know,  unless 
you  suggest  a  lethal  chamber." 

For  a  generation  Socialism,  in  the  exaltation  of  its  self- 
discovery,  failed  to  measure  these  primary  obstacles, 
failed  to  recognize  the  real  necessity,  the  quality  of  the 
task  of  making  these  people  understand.  To  this  day  the 
majority  of  Socialists  still  fail  to  grasp  completely  the 
Herbartian  truth,  the  fact  that  every  human  soul  moves 
within  its  circle  of  ideas,  resisting  enlargement,  incapable 
indeed  if  once  it  is  adult  of  any  extensive  enlargement, 
and  that  all  effectual  human  progress  can  be  achieved 
only  through  such  enlargement.  Only  ideas  cognate  to 
a  circle  of  ideas  are  assimilated  or  assimilable;  ideas 
too  alien,  though  you  shout  them  in  the  ear,  thrust  them 
in  the  face,  remain  foreign  and  incomprehensible. 


210  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

The  early  Socialists,  arriving  at  last  at  their  Great 
Idea,  after  toilsome  questionings,  after  debates,  dispu- 
tations, studies,  trials,  saw,  and  instantly  couldn't 
understand  those  others  who  did  not  see;  they  failed 
altogether  to  realize  the  leaps  they  had  made,  the  brilliant 
omissions  they  had  achieved,  the  difficulties  they  had 
evaded  to  get  to  this  magnificent  conception.  •  I  suppose 
such  impatience  is  as  natural  and  understandable  as  it  is 
unfortunate.  None  of  us  escape  it.  Much  of  this  early 
Socialism  is  as  unreal  as  mathematics,  has  much  the 
same  relation  to  truth  as  the  abstract  absolute  process 
of  calculation  has  to  concrete  individual  things;  much 
of  it  more  than  justifies  altogether  that  "black  or  white" 
method  of  criticism  of  which  I  wrote  in  the  preceding 
chapter.  They  were  as  downright  and  unconsidering, 
as  little  capable  of  the  reasoned  middle  attitude.  Prou- 
dhon,  perceiving  that  the  world  was  obsessed  by  a  mis- 
conception of  the  scope  of  property  whereby  the  many 
were  enslaved  to  the  few,  went  off  at  a  tangent  to  the 
announcement  that  "Property  is  Robbery,"  an  exag- 
geration that,  as  I  have  already  shown,  still  haunts 
Socialist  discussion.  The  ultimate  factor  of  all  human 
affairs,  the  psychological  factor,  was  disregarded.  Like 
the  classic  mathematical  problem,  early  Socialism  was 
always  "neglecting  the  weight  of  the  elephant"  or  some 
other  —  from   the    practical    point    of    view  —  equally 


SOCIALISM   A   DEVELOPING    DOCTRINE  211 

essential  factor.  This  was  perhaps  an  unavoidable 
stage.  It  is  probable  that  by  no  other  means  than  such 
exaggeration  and  partial  statement  could  Socialism  have 
got  itself  begun.  The  world  of  1830  was  fatally  wrong 
in  its  ideas  of  property ;  early  Socialism  rose  up  and  gave 
those  ideas  a  flat,  extreme,  outrageous  contradiction. 
After  that,  analysis  and  discussion  became  possible. 

The  early  Socialist  literature  teems  with  rash,  sugges- 
tive schemes.  It  has  the  fertility,  the  confusion,  the  hope- 
fulness, the  promise  of  glowing  youth.  It  is  a  quarry  of 
ideas,  a  mine  of  crude  expedients,  a  fountain  of  emo- 
tions. The  abolition  of  money,  the  substitution  of  labour 
notes,  the  possibility,  justice,  and  advantage  of  equalizing 
upon  a  time-basis  the  remuneration  of  the  worker,  the 
relation  of  the  new  community  to  the  old  family,  a  hun- 
dred such  topics  were  ventilated  —  were  not  so  much 
ventilated  as  tossed  about  in  an  impassioned  gale. 

Much  of  this  earlier  Socialist  literature  was  like 
Cabet's  book,  actually  Utopian  in  form;  a  still  larger 
proportion  was  Utopian  in  spirit ;  its  appeal  was  imagi- 
native, and  it  aimed  to  be  a  plan  of  a  new  state  as  definite 
and  detailed  as  the  plan  for  the  building  of  a  house.  It 
has  been  the  fashion  with  a  number  of  later  Socialist 
writers  and  speakers,  mind-struck  with  that  blessed  word 
"evolution,"  confusing  "scientific,"  a  popular  epithet 
to  which  they  aspired,  with  "unimaginative,"  to  sneer 


212  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

at  the  Utopian  method,  to  make  a  sort  of  ideal  of  a  leaden 
practicality,  but  it  does  not  follow  because  the  Utopias 
produced  and  the  experiments  attempted  were  in  many 
aspects  unreasonable  and  absurd  that  the  method  itself 
is  an  unsound  one.  At  a  certain  phase  of  every  creative 
effort  you  must  cease  to  study  the  thing  that  is,  and 
plan  the  thing  that  is  not.  The  early  Socialisms  were 
only  premature  plans  and  hasty  working  models  that 
failed  to  work. 

And  it  must  be  remembered  when  we  consider  Social- 
ism's early  extravagancies,  that  any  idea  or  system  of 
ideas  which  challenges  the  existing  system  is  necessarily, 
in  relation  to  that  system,  outcast.  Mediocre  men  go 
soberly  on  the  highroads,  but  saints  and  scoundrels  meet 
in  the  jails.  If  A  and  B  rebel  against  the  government, 
they  are  apt,  although  they  rebel  for  widely  different 
reasons,  to  be  classed  together ;  they  are  apt,  indeed,  to  be 
thrown  together  and  tempted  to  sink  even  quite  essen- 
tial differences  in  making  common  cause  against  the 
enemy.  So  that  from  its  very  beginning  Socialism  was 
mixed  up — to  this  day  it  remains  mixed  up — with  other 
movements  of  revolt  and  criticism,  with  which  it  has  no 
very  natural  connection.  There  is,  for  example,  the 
unfortunate  entanglement  between  the  Socialist  theory 
and  that  repudiation  of  any  but  subjective  sexual  limi- 
tations which  is  called  "free  love,"  and  there  is  that 


SOCIALISM  A   DEVELOPING    DOCTRINE  213 

still  more  unfortunate  association  of  its  rebellion  against 
orthodox  economic  theories,  with  rebellion  against 
this  or  that  system  of  religious  teaching.  Several  of  the 
early  Socialist  communities  again  rebelled  against  ortho- 
dox clothing,  and  their  women  made  short  hair  and 
bloomers  the  outward  and  visible  associations  of  the 
communistic  idea.  I  have  done  my  very  best  (in 
Chapter  VIII,  §  2)  to  clear  the  exposition  of  Socialism 
from  these  entanglements,  but  it  is  well  to  recognize  that 
these  are  no  corruptions  of  its  teaching,  but  an  inevi- 
table birth  infection  that  has  still  to  be  completely 
overcome. 

§2 
The  comprehensively  constructive  spirit  of  modern 
Socialism  is  very  much  to  seek  in  these  childhood  phases 
that  came  before  Marx.  These  early  projects  were  for 
the  most  part  developed  by  literary  men  (and  by  one 
philosophic  business  man,  Owen)  to  whose  circle  of  ideas 
the  conception  of  state  organization  and  administration 
was  foreign.  They  took  peace  and  order  for  granted  — 
they  left  out  the  schoolmaster,  the  judge,  and  the  police- 
man, as  the  amateur  architect  of  the  anecdote  left  out 
the  staircase.  They  set  out  to  contrive  a  better  indus- 
trial organization,  or  a  better  social  atmosphere  within 
the  present  scheme  of  things.  They  wished  to  reform 
what  they   understood,   and   what   was   outside  their 


214  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

circle  of  ideas  they  took  for  granted,  as  they  took  the 
sky  and  sea.  Not  only  was  their  literature  Utopian 
literature  about  little  islands  of  things  begun  over  again 
from  the  beginning,  but  their  activities  tended  in  the  di- 
rection of  Utopian  experiments  equally  limited  and  iso- 
lated. Here  again  a  just  critic  will  differ  from  many 
contemporary  Socialists  in  their  depreciation  of  this  sort 
of  work.  Owen's  experiments  in  socialized  production 
were  of  enormous  educational  and  scientific  value. 
They  were,  to  use  a  mining  expert's  term,  "  hand  speci- 
mens" of  human  welfare  of  the  utmost  value  to 
promoters.  They  made  factory  legislation  possible; 
they  initiated  the  now  immense  cooperative  movement  ; 
they  stirred  commonplace  imaginations  as  only  achieve- 
ment can  stir  them ;  they  initiated  a  process  of  ameliora- 
tion in  industrial  conditions  that  will  never,  I  beheve, 
cease  again  until  the  Socialist  State  is  attained. 

But  apart  from  Owen  and  the  general  advertisement 
given  to  Socialist  ideas,  it  must  be  admitted  that  a 
great  majority  of  Socialist  communities  have,  by  every 
material  standard,  failed  rather  than  succeeded.  Some 
went  visibly  insolvent  and  to  pieces ;  others  were  changed 
by  prosperity.  Some  were  wrecked  by  the  sudden  lapse 
of  the  treasurer  into  an  extreme  individualism.  Essen- 
tially, Socialism  is  a  project  for  the  species,  but  these 
communities  made  it  a  system  of  relationships  within  a 


SOCIALISM   A  DEVELOPING    DOCTRINE  215 

little  group ;  to  the  world  without  they  had  necessarily  to 
turn  a  competitive  face,  to  buy  and  sell  and  advertise  on 
the  lines  of  the  system  as  it  is.  If  they  failed,  they 
failed;  if  they  succeeded,  they  presently  found  them- 
selves landlords,  employers,  no  more  and  no  less  than 
a  corporate  individualism.  I  have  described  elsewhere  ^ 
the  fate  of  the  celebrated  Oneida  Community  of  New 
York  State,  and  how  it  is  now  converted  into  an  aggres- 
sive, wealthy,  fighting  corporation  of  the  most  modern 
type,  employing  immigrant  labour. 

Professed  and  conscious  Socialism  in  its  earliest 
stages,  then,  was  an  altogether  extreme  proposition ; 
it  was  at  once  imperfect  and  over-emphatic,  and  it  was 
confused  with  many  quite  irrelevant  and  inconsistent 
novelties  with  regard  to  diet,  dress,  medicine,  and 
religion.  Its  first  manifest,  acknowledged,  and  la- 
belled fruits  were  a  series  of  futile  "communities"  — 
Noyes's  History  of  American  Socialisms  gives  their  simple 
history  of  births  and  of  fatal  infantile  ailments  — 
Brook  Farm,  Fourierite  "  Phalanges, "  and  the  like.  But 
correlated  with  these  extreme  efforts,  drawing  ideas  and 
inspiration  from  them,  was  the  great  philanthropic 
movement  for  the  amelioration  of  industrialism,  that  was, 
I  insist,  for  all  its  absence  of  a  definite  Socialist  label, 
in  many  cases,  an  equally  legitimate  factor  in  the  mak- 
*  The  Future  in  America.     (Chapman  and  Hall,  1906.) 


216  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

ing  of  the  great  conception  of  modern  Socialism. 
Socialism  may  be  the  child  of  the  French  Revolution, 
but  it  certainly  has  one  aristocratic  Tory  grandparent. 
There  can  be  little  dispute  of  the  close  connection  of  Lord 
Shaftesbury's  Factory  Acts,  that  commencement  of 
constructive  statesmanship  in  industrialism,  with  the 
work  of  Owen.  The  whole  Victorian  period  marks  a 
steady  development  of  social  organization  out  of  the 
cruel  economic  anarchy  of  its  commencement;  the  be- 
ginnings of  public  education,  adulteration  acts,  and 
similar  checks  upon  the  extremities  of  private  enterprise, 
the  great  successful  experiments  of  cooperative  distribu- 
tion, and  the  first  appearance  of  what  has  now  become 
a  quasi-official  representation  of  labour  in  the  state 
through  the  trades  unions.  Two  great  writers,  Car- 
lyle  and  Ruskin,  the  latter  a  professed  Socialist,  spent 
their  powers  in  a  relentless  campaign  against  the  harsh 
theories  of  the  liberty  of  property,  the  gloomy  supersti- 
tions of  political  economy  that  barred  the  way  to  any 
effectual  constructive  scheme.  An  enormous  work  was 
done  throughout  the  whole  Victorian  period  by  Social- 
ists and  Socialistic  writers,  in  criticising  and  modifying 
the  average  circle  of  ideas,  in  bringing  conceptions  that 
had  once  seemed  weird,  outcast  and  altogether  fantastic, 
more  and  more  within  the  range  of  acceptable  prac- 
ticality. 


SOCIALISM   A  DEVELOPING    DOCTRINE  217 

The  first  early  Socialisms  were  most  various  and 
eccentric  upon  the  question  of  government  and  control. 
They  had  no  essential  political  teaching.  Many,  but 
by  no  means  all,  were  inspired  by  the  democratic  idealism 
of  the  first  French  Revolution.  They  believed  in  a 
mystical  something  that  was  wiser  and  better  than  any 
individual,  the  People,  the  Common  Man.  But  that  was 
by  no  means  the  case  with  all  of  them.  The  Noyes 
community  was  a  sort  of  theocratic  autocracy;  the 
Saint  Simonian  tendency  was  aristocratic.  The  English 
Socialism  that  in  the  middle  Victorian  period  developed 
partly  out  of  the  suggestions  of  Owen's  beginnings  and 
partly  as  an  independent  fresh  outpouring  of  the  strug- 
ghng  Good  Will  in  man,  that  English  Socialism  that  found 
a  voice  in  Ruskin  and  in  Maurice  and  Kingsley  and  the 
Christian  Socialists,  was  certainly  not  democratic.  It 
kept  much  of  what  was  best  in  "the  public  spirit"  of 
contemporary  English  life,  and  it  implied,  if  it  did  not 
postulate,  a  "governing  class."  Benevolent  and  even 
generous  in  conception,  its  exponents  betray  all  too 
often  the  ties  of  social  habituations,  the  limited  circle  of 
ideas  of  English  upper  and  upper  middle-class  life,  easy 
and  cultivated,  well  served  and  distinctly,  most  unmis- 
takably, authoritative. 

While  the  experimental  Utopian  Socialisms  gave  a  sort 
of  variegated  and  conflicting  pattern  of  a  reorganized 


218  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

industrialism  and  (incidentally  to  that)  a  new  heaven 
and  earth,  the  benevolent  Socialism,  Socialistic  liberalism, 
and  Socialistic  philanthropy  of  the  middle  Victorian 
period,  really  went  very  little  farther  in  effect  than  a 
projected  amelioration  and  moralization  of  the  relations 
of  rich  and  poor.  It  needed  the  impact  of  an  entirely 
new  type  of  mind  before  Socialism  began  to  perceive  its 
own  significance  as  an  ordered  scheme  for  the  entire 
reconstruction  of  the  world,  began  to  realize  the  gigantic 
breadth  of  its  implications. 


CHAPTER  XI 

REVOLUTIONARY   SOCIALISM 


It  was  Karl  Marx  who  brought  the  second  great  influx 
of  suggestion  into  the  intellectual  process  of  Socialism. 
Before  his  time  there  does  not  seem  to  have  been  any 
clear  view  of  economic  relationships  as  having  laws  of 
development,  as  having  interactions  that  began  and  went 
on  and  led  toward  new  things.  But  Marx  had  visions. 
He  had,  as  Darwin  and  the  evolutionists  had,  as  most 
men  with  a  scientific  training,  and  many  educated  men 
without  that  advantage  now  have,  a  sense  of  secular 
change.  Instead  of  being  content  with  the  accepted 
picture  of  the  world  as  a  scene  where  men  went  on  pro- 
ducing and  distributing  wealth  and  growing  rich  or  poor, 
—  it  might  be  for  endless  ages,  —  he  made  an  appeal  to 
history  and  historical  analogies,  and  for  the  first  time 
viewed  our  age  of  individualist  industrial  development, 
not  as  a  possible  permanent  condition  of  humanity, 
but  as  something  unstable  and  in  motion,  as  an  economic 
process ;  that  is  to  say,  with  a  beginning,  a  middle,  and  as 
he  saw  it,  an  almost  inevitable  end. 

219 


220  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

The  last  thing  men  contrive  to  discern  in  every  ques- 
tion is  the  familiar  obvious,  and  it  came  as  a  great  and 
shattering  discovery  to  the  economic  and  sociological 
thought  of  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  that 
there  was  going  on  not  simply  a  production,  but  an  im- 
mense concentration  of  wealth,  a  differentiation  of  a  spe- 
cial wealthy  class  of  landholder  and  capitalist,  a  diminu- 
tion of  small  property  owners  and  the  development  of 
a  great  and  growing  class  of  landless,  nearly  property- 
less  men,  the  ^proletariat.  Marx  showed  —  he  showed 
so  clearly  that  to-day  it  is  recognized  by  every  intelli- 
gent man  —  that,  given  a  continuance  of  our  industrial 
and  commercial  system,  of  uncontrolled  gain  seeking ;  that 
is,  given  a  continuance  of  our  present  spirit  and  ideas  of 
property,  there  must  necessarily  come  a  time  when  the 
owner  and  the  proletarian  will  stand  face  to  face,  with 
nothing — if  we  accept  a  middle  class  of  educated  pro- 
fessionals dependent  on  the  wealthy,  who  are  after  all 
no  more  than  the  upper  stratum  of  the  proletariat,  to 
mask  or  mitigate  their  opposition.  We  shall  have  two 
classes,  the  class-conscious  worker  and  the  class-con- 
scious owner,  and  they  will  be  at  war.  And  with  a 
broad  intellectual  sweep  he  flung  the  light  of  this  con- 
ception upon  the  whole  contemporary  history  of  man- 
kind. His  Capital  has  no  sketch  of  Utopias,  no  limita- 
tion to  the  conditions  or  possibilities  of  this  country  or 


REVOLUTIONARY   SOCIALISM  221 

that.  "Here,"  he  says  in  the  widest  way,  "is  what  is 
going  on  all  over  the  world.  So  long  as  practically  un- 
trammelled private  property,  such  as  you  conceive  it 
to-day,  endures,  this  must  go  on.  The  worker  gravi- 
tates steadily  everywhere  to  a  bare  subsistence ;  the  rest 
of  the  proceeds  of  his  labour  swells  the  power  of  the  own- 
ers. So  it  will  go  on  while  gain  and  getting  are  the  rule 
of  your  system,  until  accumulated  tensions  between  class 
and  class  smash  this  present  social  organization  and 
inaugurate  a  new  age." 

In  considering  the  thought  and  work  of  Karl  Marx, 
the  reader  must  bear  in  mind  the  epoch  in  which  that 
work  commenced.  The  intellectual  world  was  then 
under  the  sway  of  an  organized  mass  of  ideas  known  as 
the  Science  of  Political  Economy,  a  mass  of  ideas  that 
has  now  not  so  much  been  examined  and  refuted  as 
slipped  away  imperceptibly  from  its  hold  upon  the 
minds  of  men.  In  the  beginning,  in  the  hands  of  Adam 
Smith,  —  whose  richly  suggestive  books  are  now  all  too 
little  read,  —  political  economy  was  a  broad-minded  and 
sane  inquiry  into  the  statecraft  of  trade  based  upon 
current  assumptions  of  private  ownership  and  personal 
motives,  but  from  him  it  passed  to  men  of,  perhaps,  in 
some  cases  quite  equal  intellectual  energy,  but  inferior 
vision  and  range.  The  history  of  Political  Economy  is 
indeed  one  of  the  most  striking  instances  of  the  mis- 


222  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

chief  wrought  by  intellectual  minds  devoid  of  vision  in 
the  entire  history  of  human  thought.  Special  definition, 
technicality,  are  the  stigmata  of  second-rate  intellectual 
men;  they  cannot  work  with  the  universal  tool,  they 
cannot  appeal  to  the  general  mind.  They  must  ab- 
stract and  separate.  On  such  men  fell  the  giant's  robe 
of  Adam  Smith,  and  they  wore  it  after  their  manner. 
Their  arid  atmospheres  are  intolerant  of  clouds,  an 
outline  that  is  not  harsh  is  abominable  to  them.  They 
criticised  their  master's  vagueness,  and  must  needs 
mend  it.  They  sought  to  give  political  economy  a 
precision  and  conviction  such  a  subject  will  not  stand. 
They  took  such  words  as  "  value,"  an  incurably  and 
necessarily  vague  word,  "  rent,"  the  name  of  the  specific 
relation  of  landlord  and  tenant,  and  "  capital,"  and 
sought  to  define  them  with  relentless  exactness  and  use 
them  with  inevitable  effect.  So  doing  they  departed 
more  and  more  from  reality.  They  developed  a  litera- 
ture more  abundant,  more  difficult  and  less  real  than  all 
the  exercises  of  the  schoolmen  put  together.  To  use 
common  words  in  uncommon  meanings  is  to  sow  a 
jungle  of  misunderstanding.  It  was  only  to  be  ex- 
pected that  the  bulk  of  this  economic  literature  resolves 
upon  analysis  into  a  ponderous,  intricate,  often  aston- 
ishingly able  and  foolish  wrangling  about  terminology. 
Now  in  the  early  Victorian  period  in  which  Marx 


REVOLUTIONARY  SOCIALISM  223 

planned  his  theorizing,  political  economy  ruled  the  edu- 
cated world.  Ruskin  had  still  to  attack  the  primary 
assumptions  of  that  tyrannous  and  dogmatic  edifice. 
The  duller  sort  of  educated  people  talked  of  the  "im- 
mutable laws  of  political  economy"  in  the  blankest 
ignorance  that  the  basis  of  everything  in  this  so-called 
science  was  a  plastic  human  convention.  Humane 
impulses  were  checked,  creative  effort  tried  and  con- 
demned by  these  mystical  formulae.  Political  economy 
traded  on  the  splendid  achievements  of  physics  and 
chemistry  and  pretended  to  an  equally  inexorable  author- 
ity. Only  a  man  of  supreme  courage,  intelligence  and 
power,  a  man  resolved  to  give  his  lifetime  to  the  task, 
could  afford  in  those  days  to  combat  the  pretensions  of 
the  political  economist ;  to  deny  that  his  categories  pre- 
sented scientific  truth,  and  to  cast  that  jargon  side.  As 
for  Marx,  he  saw  fit  to  accept  the  verbal  instruments  of 
his  time  (albeit  he  bent  them  not  a  little  in  use),  to 
accommodate  himself  to  their  spirit,  and  to  split  and 
reclassify  and  redefine  them  at  his  need.  So  that  he  has 
become  already  difficult  to  follow,  and  his  more  special- 
ized exponents  among  Socialists  use  terms  that  arouse 
no  echoes  in  the  contemporary  mind.  The  days  when 
Socialism  need  present  its  theories  in  terms  of  a  science 
whose  fundamental  propositions  it  repudiates,  are  at 
an  end.    One  hears  less  and  less  of  "surplus  value"  now, 


224  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

as  one  hears  less  and  less  of  Ricardo's  theory  of  Rent. 
It  may  crop  up  in  the  inquiries  of  some  intelligent 
mechanic  seeking  knowledge  among  the  obsolescent  ac- 
cumulations of  a  public  library,  or  it  may  for  a  moment 
be  touched  upon  by  some  veteran  teacher.  But  the 
time  when  social  and  economic  science  had  to  choose 
between  debatable  and  inexpressive  technicalities  on 
the  one  hand,  or  the  stigma  of  empiricism  on  the  other,  is 
altogether  past. 

The  language  a  man  uses,  however,  is  of  far  less  im- 
portance than  the  thing  he  has  to  say,  and  it  detracts 
little  from  the  cardinal  importance  of  Marx  that  his 
books  will  presently  demand  restatement  in  contempo- 
rary phraseology,  and  revision  in  the  light  of  contempo- 
rary facts.  He  opened  out  Socialism.  It  is  easy  to 
quibble  about  Marx,  and  say  he  didn't  see  this  or  that, 
to  produce  this  eddy  in  a  backwater,  or  that  as  a  tri- 
umphant refutation  of  his  general  theory.  One  may 
quibble  about  the  greatness  of  Marx,  as  one  may 
quibble  about  the  greatness  of  Darwin,  he  remains 
great  and  cardinal.  He  first  saw  and  enabled  this 
world  to  see  capitalistic  production  as  a  world  process, 
passing  by  necessity  through  certain  stages  of  social 
development,  and  unless  some  change  of  law  and  spirit 
came  to  modify  it,  moving  toward  an  inevitable  destiny. 
His  followers  are  too  apt  to  regard  that  as  an  absolutely 


REVOLUTIONARY  SOCIALISM  225 

inevitable  destiny,  but  the  fault  of  that  lies  not  at  his 
door.  He  saw  that  destiny  as  Socialism.  It  did  not 
appear  to  him  as  it  does  to  many  that  there  is  a  possible 
alternative  to  Socialism,  that  the  process  may  give  us, 
not  a  triumph  for  the  revolting  proletariat,  but  their 
defeat,  and  the  establishment  of  a  plutocratic  aristoc- 
racy culminating  in  Imperialism  and  ending  in  social 
disintegration.  From  his  study,  from  the  studious  ro- 
tunda of  the  British  Museum  Reading  Room,  he  made 
his  prophecy  of  the  growing  class  consciousness  of  the 
workers,  of  the  inevitable  class  war,  of  the  revolution 
and  the  millennium  that  was  to  follow  it.  He  gathered 
his  facts,  elaborated  his  deductions,  and  waited  for  the 
dawn. 

So  far  as  his  broad  generalizations  of  economic  develop- 
ment go,  events  have  wonderfully  confirmed  Marx.  The 
development  of  Trusts,  the  concentration  of  property 
that  America  in  particular  displays,  he  foretold.  Given 
that  men  keep  to  the  unmodified  ideas  of  private  prop- 
erty and  individualism,  and  it  seems  absolutely  true 
that  so  the  world  must  go.  And  in  the  American 
Appeal  to  Reason,  for  example,  which  goes  out  weekly 
from  Kansas  to  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  subscribers,  one 
may,  if  one  chooses,  see  the  developing  class  conscious- 
ness of  the  workers,  and  the  promise — and  when  strikers 
take  to  rifles  and  explosives,  as  they  do  in  Pennsylvania 


226  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

and  Colorado,  something  more  than  the  promise  of  the 
class  war. 

But  the  modern  Socialist  considers  that  this  generali- 
zation is  a  little  too  confident  and  comprehensive;  he 
perceives  that  a  change  in  custom,  law,  or  public  opin- 
ion may  delay,  arrest,  or  invert  the  economic  process, 
that  Socialism  may  arrive  after  all,  not  by  a  social  convul- 
sion, but  by  the  gradual  and  detailed  concession  of  its 
propositions.  The  Marxist  presents  dramatically  what, 
after  all,  may  come  methodically  and  unromantically, 
a  revolution  as  orderly  and  quiet  as  the  procession  of  the 
Equinoxes.  There  may  be  a  concentration  of  capital 
and  a  relative  impoverishment  of  the  general  working 
mass  of  people,  for  example,  and  yet  a  general  advance 
in  the  world's  prosperity  and  a  growing  sense  of  social 
duty  in  the  owners  of  capital  and  land  may  do  much  to 
mask  this  antagonism  of  class  interests  and  ameliorate 
its  miseries.  Moreover,  this  antagonism  itself  may  in 
the  end  find  adequate  expression  through  temperate  dis- 
cussion, and  the  class  war  come  disguised  beyond  recog- 
nition, with  hates  mitigated  by  charity  and  swords  beaten 
into  pens,  a  mere  constructive  conference  between  two 
classes  of  fairly  well-intentioned  albeit  perhaps  still 
biassed  men  and  women. 


REVOLUTIONARY   SOCIALISM  227 

§2 

The  circle  of  ideas  in  which  Marx  moved  was  that  of 
a  student  deeply  tinged  with  the  idealism  of  the  re- 
nascent French  Revolution.  His  life  was  the  life  of  a 
recluse  from  affairs,  an  invalid's  life;  a  large  part  of  it 
was  spent  round  and  about  the  British  Museum  reading- 
room,  and  his  conceptions  of  Socialism  and  the  social 
process  have  at  once  the  spacious  vistas  given  by  the 
historical  habit  and  the  abstract  quality  that  comes  with 
a  divorce  from  practical  experience  of  human  govern- 
ment. Only  in  England  and  in  the  eighties  did  the 
expanding  propositions  of  Socialism  come  under  the 
influence  of  men  essentially  administrative.  As  a  con- 
sequence Marx,  and  still  more  the  early  "Marxists" 
were  and  are  negligent  of  the  necessities  of  government 
and  crude  in  their  notions  of  class  action.  He  saw  the 
economic  process  with  a  perfect  lucidity ;  practically  he 
foretold  the  consolidation  of  the  Trusts,  and  his  statement 
of  the  necessary  development  of  an  entirely  propertyless 
working-class  with  an  intensifying  class-consciousness  is 
a  magnificent  generalization.  He  saw  clearly  up  to  that 
opposition  of  the  many  and  the  few,  and  then  his  vision 
failed  because  his  experience  and  interests  failed.  There 
was  to  be  a  class-war,  and  numbers  schooled  to  discipline 
by  industrial  organization  were  to  win. 


228  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

After  that  the  teaching  weakens  in  conviction.  The 
proletariat  was  to  win  in  the  class- war ;  then  classes  would 
be  abolished,  property  in  the  means  of  production  and 
distribution  would  be  abolished,  all  men  would  work 
reasonably,  and  the  millennium  would  be  with  us. 

The  constructive  part  of  the  Marxist  programme  was 
too  slight.  It  has  no  psychology.  Contrasted,  indeed, 
with  the  splendid  destructive  criticisms  that  preceded 
it,  it  seems  indeed  trivial.  It  diagnoses  a  disease  admi- 
rably and  then  suggests  rather  an  incantation  than  a 
plausible  remedy.  And  as  a  consequence  Marxist 
Socialism  appeals  only  very  feebly  to  the  man  of 
public  afTairs  or  business  or  social  experience.  It  does 
not  attract  teachers  or  medical  men  or  engineers.  It 
arouses  such  men  to  a  sense  of  social  instability,  but  it 
offers  no  remedy.  They  do  not  believe  in  the  mystical 
wisdom  of  the  People.  They  find  no  satisfactory 
promise  of  a  millennium  in  anything  Marx  foretold. 

To  the  labouring  man,  however,  accustomed  to  take 
direction  and  government  as  he  takes  air  and  sky,  these 
difficulties  of  the  administrative  and  constructive  mind 
do  not  occur.  His  imagination  raises  no  questioning  in 
that  picture  of  the  proletariat  triumphant  after  a  class- 
war  and  quietly  coming  to  its  own.  It  does  not  occur 
to  him  for  an  instant  to  ask,  "  How?  " 

Question  the  common  Marxist  upon  these  difficulties 


REVOLUTIONARY  SOCIALISM  229 

and  he  will  relapse  magnificently  into  the  doctrine  of 
laissez-faire.     "That  will  be  all  right,"  he  will  tell  you. 

"How?" 

"We'll  take  over  the  trusts  and  run  them." 

It  is  part  of  the  inconveniences  attending  all  powerful 
new  movements  of  the  human  mind  that  the  disciple  bolts 
with  the  teacher,  overstates  him,  underlines  him,  and  it 
is  no  more  than  a  tribute  to  the  potency  of  Marx  that  he 
should  have  paralyzed  the  critical  faculty  in  a  number  of 
very  able  men.  To  them  Marx  is  a  final  form  of  truth. 
They  talk  with  bated  breath  of  a  "classic  socialism,"  to 
which  no  man  may  add  one  jot  or  one  tittle,  to  which 
they  are  as  uncritically  pledged  as  extreme  Bible  Chris- 
tians are  bound  to  the  letter  of  the  "Word."  .  .  . 

The  peculiar  evil  of  the  Marxist  teaching  is  this :  that 
it  carries  the  conception  of  a  necessary  economic  develop- 
ment to  the  pitch  of  fatalism;  it  declares,  with  all  the 
solemnity  of  popular  "science,"  that  Sociahsm  must 
prevail.  Such  a  fatalism  is  morally  bad  for  the  adherent : 
it  releases  him  from  the  inspiring  sense  of  uncertain  vic- 
tory, it  leads  him  to  believe  the  stars  in  their  courses  will 
do  his  job  for  him.  The  common  Marxist  is  apt  to  be 
sterile  of  efTort  therefore  and  intolerant  —  preaching  pre- 
destination and  salvation  without  works. 

By  a  circuitous  route,  indeed,  the  Marxist  reaches  a 
moral  position  curiously  analogous  to  that  of  the  disciple 


230  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

of  Herbert  Spencer.  Since  all  improvement  will  arrive 
by  leaving  things  alone,  the  worse  things  get,  the  better ; 
for  so  much  the  nearer  one  comes  to  the  final  exaspera- 
tion, to  the  class- war  and  the  triumph  of  the  proletariat. 
This  certainty  of  victory  in  the  nature  of  things  makes 
the  Marxists  difficult  in  politics,  pedantic  sticklers  for 
the  letter  of  the  teaching,  obstinate  opponents  of  what 
they  call  "Palliatives" — of  any  instalment  system  of  re- 
form. They  wait  until  they  can  make  the  whole  journey 
in  one  stride  and  would,  in  the  meanwhile,  have  no  one 
set  forth  upon  the  way.  In  America  the  Marxist  fatal- 
ism has  found  a  sort  of  supreme  simplification  in  the 
gospel  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wilshire.  The  trusts,  one  learns,  are 
to  consolidate  all  the  industry  in  the  country,  own  all  the 
property.  Then  when  they  own  everji,hing,  the  nation 
will  take  them  over.  "Let  the  nation  own  the  trusts  !" 
The  nation  in  the  form  of  a  public,  reading  capitalistic 
newspapers,  inured  to  capitalistic  methods,  represented 
and  ruled  by  capital-controlled  politicians,  will  suddenly 
take  over  the  trusts  and  begin  a  new  system.  .  .  . 

It  would  be  quite  charmingly  easy,  if  it  were  only  in 
the  remotest  degree  credible. 

§3 

The    Marxist    teaching    tends   to    an   unreasonable 
fatalism.     Its  conception  of  the  world  after  the  class- 


REVOLUTIONARY   SOCIALISM  231 

war  is  over  is  equally  antagonistic  to  intelligent  con- 
structive effort.  It  faces  that  Future,  utters  the  word 
"democracy,"  and  veils  its  eyes. 

The  conception  of  democracy  to  which  the  Marxist  ad- 
heres is  that  same  mystical  democracy  that  was  evolved 
at  the  first  French  Revolution ;  it  will  sanction  no  analy- 
sis of  the  popular  wisdom.  It  postulates  a  sort  of  spirit 
hidden,  as  it  were,  in  the  masses  and  only  revealed  by  a 
universal  suffrage  of  all  adults  or,  according  to  some  social 
democratic  federation,  authorities  who  do  not  believe 
in  women,  all  adult  males,  at  the  ballot-box.  Even  a 
large  proportion  of  the  adults  will  not  do,  —  it  must  be  all. 
The  mysterious  spirit  that  thus  peers  out  and  vanishes 
again  at  each  election  is  the  People,  not  any  particular 
person,  but  the  quintessence,  and  it  is  supposed  to  be 
infallible;  it  is  supposed  to  be  not  only  morally  but 
intellectually  omniscient.  It  will  not  even  countenance 
the  individuality  of  elected  persons,  they  are  to  be  mere 
tools,  delegates,  from  this  diffused,  intangible  Oracle, 
the  Ultimate  Wisdom. 

Well,  it  may  seem  ungracious  to  sneer  at  the  gro- 
tesque formulation  of  an  idea  profoundly  wise,  at  the 
hurried,  wrong,  arithmetical  method  of  rendering  that 
collective  spirit  a  community  undoubtedly  can  and 
sometimes  does  possess,  —  I  myself  am  the  profoundest 
believer  in  democracy,  in  a  democracy  awake  intellec- 


232  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

tually,  conscious,  and  self-disciplined,  —  but  so  long  as 
this  mystic  faith  in  the  crowd,  this  vague,  emotional, 
uncritical  way  of  evading  the  immense  difficulties  of 
organizing  just  government  and  a  collective  will  prevails, 
so  long  must  the  Socialist  project  remain  not  simply 
an  impracticable,  but,  in  an  illiterate,  badly  organized 
community,  even  a  dangerous  suggestion.  I  as  a  So- 
cialist am  not  blind  to  these  possibilities,  and  it  is 
foolish  because  a  man  is  in  many  ways  on  one's  side  that 
one  should  not  call  attention  to  his  careless  handling  of 
a  loaded  gun.  Social-Democracy  may  conceivably  be- 
come a  force  that  in  the  sheer  power  of  untutored  faith 
may  destroy  government  and  not  replace  it.  I  do  not 
know  how  far  that  is  not  already  the  case  in  Russia.  I 
do  not  know  how  far  this  may  not  ultimately  be  the  case 
in  the  United  States  of  America. 

The  Marxist  teaching,  great  as  was  its  advance  on  the 
dispersed  chaotic  Socialism  that  preceded  it,  was  defective 
in  other  directions  as  well  as  in  its  innocence  of  any 
scheme  of  state  organization.  About  women  and 
children,  for  example,  it  was  ill-informed;  its  founders 
do  not  seem  to  have  been  inspired  either  by  educational 
necessities  or  philoprogenitive  passion.  No  biologist  — 
indeed  no  scientific  mind  at  all  —  seems  to  have  tem- 
pered its  severely  "economic"  tendencies.  Indeed  it 
so  over-accentuates  the  economic  side  of  life  that  at 


REVOLUTIONARY  SOCIALISM  233 

moments  one  might  imagine  it  dealt  solely  with  some 
world  of  purely  ''productive"  immortals,  who  were 
never  born  and  never  aged,  but  only  warred  forever  in  a 
developing  industrial  process. 

Now  reproduction  and  not  production  is  the  more 
central  fact  of  social  life.  Women  and  children  and 
education  are  things  in  the  background  of  the  Marxist 
proposal  —  like  a  man's  dog  or  his  private  reading  or 
his  pet  rabbits.  They  are  in  the  foreground  of  modern 
Socialism.  The  Social-Democrat's  doctrines  go  little 
further  in  this  direction  than  the  liberalism  that 
founded  the  United  States,  which  ignored  women, 
children,  and  niggers,  and  made  the  political  unit  the 
adult  white  man.  They  were  blind  to  the  supreme 
importance  of  making  the  next  generation  better  than 
the  present  as  the  aim  and  effort  of  the  whole  commu- 
nity. Herr  Bebel's  book.  Woman,  is  an  ample  state- 
ment of  the  evils  of  woman's  lot  under  the  existing 
regime,  but  the  few  pages  upon  the  future  of  woman 
with  which  he  concludes  are  eloquent  of  the  jejune 
insufficiency  of  the  Marxite  outlook  in  this  direction. 
Marriage  as  a  social  fact  is  to  vanish;  women  are 
to  count  as  men  so  far  as  the  state  is  concerned. 
That  is  all.  .  .  . 

This  disregard  of  the  primary  importance  of  births 
and  upbringing  in  human  affairs  and  this  advocacy  of 


234  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

mystical  democracy  alike  contribute  to  blind  the  Marxist 
to  the  necessity  of  an  educational  process  and  of  discipline 
in  the  Socialist  scheme.  He  can  say  with  a  light  and 
confident  heart  to  untrained,  ignorant,  groping  souls, 
"  destroy  the  government ;  expropriate  the  rich ;  estab- 
lish manhood  suffrage;  elect  delegates,  strictly  pledged, 
—  and  you  will  be  happy  !" 

A  few  modern  Marxists  stipulate  in  addition  for  a 
referendum,  by  which  the  activities  of  the  elected  dele- 
gates can  be  further  checked  by  referring  disputed 
matters  to  a  general  vote  of  all  the  adults  in  the  com- 
munity. ,  .  . 

§4 

My  memory,  as  I  write  these  things  of  Marxism, 
carries  me  to  the  dusky  largeness  of  a  great  meeting  in 
Queen's  Hall,  and  I  see  again  the  back  of  Mr.  Hynd- 
man's  head  moving  quickly,  as  he  receives  and  answers 
questions.  It  was  really  one  of  the  strangest  and  most 
interesting  meetings  I  have  ever  attended.  It  was  a 
great  rally  of  the  Social- Democratic  federation,  and  the 
place,  floor,  galleries  and  platform,  was  thick  but  by 
no  means  overcrowded  with  dingy,  earnest  people. 
There  was  a  great  display  of  red  badges  and  red  ties,  and 
many  white  faces,  and  I  was  struck  by  the  presence  of 
girls  and  women  with  babies.     It  was  more  like  the 


REVOLUTIONARY   SOCIALISM  235 

Socialist  meetings  of  the  popular  novel  than  any  I  had 
ever  seen  before.  In  the  chair  that  night  was  Lady 
Warwick,  that  remarkable  intruder  into  the  class  con- 
flict; a  blond  lady  rather  expensively  dressed,  I  should 
judge,  about  whom  the  atmosphere  of  class-consciousness 
seemed  to  thicken.  Her  fair  hair,  her  floriferous  hat, 
told  out  against  the  dim  multitudinous  values  of  the 
gathering  unquenchably ;  there  were  moments  when  one 
might  have  fancied  it  was  simply  a  gathering  of  village 
tradespeople  about  the  lady  patroness,  and  at  the  end 
of  the  proceedings,  after  the  red  flag  had  been  waved, 
after  the  "  Red  Flag  "  had  been  sung  by  a  choir  and  damply 
echoed  by  the  audience,  some  one  moved  a  vote  of 
thanks  to  the  Countess  in  terms  of  familiar  respect  that 
completed  the  illusion. 

Mr.  Hyndman's  lecture  was  "In  the  Rapids  of  Revo- 
lution," and  he  had  been  explaining  how  inevitable 
the  whole  process  was,  how  Russia  drove  ahead,  and 
Germany  and  France  and  America,  to  the  foretold  crisis 
and  the  foretold  millennium.  But  incidentally  he  also 
made  a  spirited  exhortation  for  effort,  for  agitation,  and 
he  taunted  England  for  lagging  in  the  schemes  of  fate. 
Some  one  amidst  the  dim  multitude  discovered  an  in- 
consistency in  that. 

Now  the  questions  were  being  handed  in,  wTitten  on 
strips   of  paper,   and  at   last  that  listener's   difficulty 


236  NEW  WORLDS   FOR   OLD 

cropped  up.  "What's  this?"  said  Mr.  Hyndman,  un- 
folded the  sHp  and  read  out,  "Why  trouble  to  agitate  or 
work  if  the  trusts  are  going  to  do  it  all  for  us  ?" 

The  veteran  leader  of  the  Social-Democratic  federa- 
tion paused  only  for  a  moment. 

"Well,  we've  got  to  get  ready  for  it,  you  know,"  he  said, 
rustling  briskly  with  the  folds  of  the  question  to  follow, 
and  with  these  words,  it  seemed  to  me,  that  fatahstic 
Marxism  crumbled  down  to  dust. 

We  have  got  to  get  ready  for  it.  Indeed  we  have  to 
make  it,  by  education  and  intention  and  set  resolve. 
Socialism  is  to  be  attained,  not  by  fate,  but  by  will. 

§5 

And  here,  as  a  sort  of  Eastern  European  gloss  upon 
Marxist  Socialism,  as  an  extreme  and  indeed  ultimate 
statement  of  this  marriage  of  mystical  democracy  to 
Socialism,  we  may  say  a  word  of  Anarchism.  Anar- 
chism carries  the  administrative  laissez-faire  of  Marx  to 
its  logical  extremity.  "If  the  common,  untutored  man 
is  right  anyhow  —  why  these  ballot-boxes  ?  why  these 
intermediaries  in  the  shape  of  law  and  representative?  " 

That  is  the  perfectly  logical  outcome  of  ignoring 
administration  and  reconstruction.  The  extreme  Social- 
Democrat  and  the  extreme  Individualist  meet  in  a 
doctrine  of  non-resistance  to  the  forces  of  Evolution  — 


REVOLUTIONARY   SOCIALISM  237 

which  in  this  connection  they  deify  with  a  capital  letter. 
Organization,  control,  design,  the  disciplined  will, 
these  are  evil,  they  declare,  the  evil  of  life.  So  you 
come  at  the  end  of  the  process,  if  you  are  active-minded, 
to  the  bomb  as  the  instrument  of  man's  release  to  un- 
impeded virtue,  and  if  you  are  pacific  in  disposition,  to 
the  Tolstoyan  attitude  of  passive  resistance  to  all  rule 
and  property. 

Anarchism,  then,  is,  as  it  were,  a  final  perversion  of 
the  Socialist  stream,  a  last  meandering  of  SociaHst 
thought,  released  from  vitalizing  association  with  an 
active,  creative  experience.  Anarchism  comes  when  the 
SociaHst  repudiation  of  property  is  dropped  into  the 
circles  of  thought  of  men  habitually  ruled  and  habitually 
irresponsible,  men  limited  in  action  and  temperamen- 
tally adverse  to  the  toil,  to  the  vexatious  rebuffs,  and 
insufficiencies,  the  dusty  effort,  fatigue,  and  friction  of 
the  practical  pursuit  of  a  complex  ideal.  So  that  it 
most  flourishes  eastwardly  where  men,  it  would  seem 
are  least  energetic  and  constructive,  and  explodes  or 
dies  on  American  soil. 

Anarchism,  with  its  knife  and  bomb,  is  a  miscarriage 
of  Socialism,  an  acephalous  birth  from  that  fruitful 
mother.  It  is  an  unnatural  offspring,  opposed  in  nature 
to  its  parent,  for  always  from  the  beginning  the  con- 
structive spirit,  the  ordering  and  organizing  spirit,  has 


238  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

been  strong  among  Socialists.  It  was  by  a  fallacy,  an 
oversight,  that  laissez-faire  in  politics  crept  into  a  move- 
ment that  was  before  all  things  an  organized  denial  of 
laissez-faire  in  economic  and  social  life.  .  .  . 

I  write  this  of  the  Anarchism  that  is  opposed  to  con- 
temporary Socialism,  the  political  Anarchism.  But 
there  is  also  another  sort  of  Anarchism,  which  the  stu- 
ent  of  these  schools  of  thought  must  keep  clear  in  his 
mind  from  this,  the  Anarchism  of  Tolstoy  and  William 
Morris,  which  waves  no  flag  of  black,  and  counsels  no 
violence;  which  is  indeed,  I  hazard,  the  moral  ideal  of 
all  right-thinking  men.  It  is  worth  while  to  define  very 
clearly  the  relation  of  the  second  sort  of  Anarchism,  the 
nobler  Anarchism,  to  the  toiling  constructive  Socialism 
which  many  of  us  now  make  our  practical  guide  in  life's 
activities,  to  say  just  where  they  touch  and  where  they 
are  apart. 

Now  the  ultimate  ideal  of  human  intercourse  is  surely 
a  way  of  life  that  is  not  litigious  and  not  based  upon 
jealously  guarded  rights,  which  is  free  from  property, 
free  from  jealousy,  and  "above  the  law."  There,  there 
shall  not  be  "marriage  or  giving  in  marriage."  The 
whole  mass  of  Christian  teaching  points  to  such  an  ideal ; 
Paul  and  Christ  turn  again  and  again  to  the  ideal  of  a 
world  of  "just  men  made  perfect,"  in  which  right  and 
beauty  come  by  instinct,  in  which  just  laws  and  regula- 


REVOLUTIONARY  SOCIALISM  239 

tions  are  unnecessary  and  unjust  ones  impossible.  "  Turn 
your  attention,"  says  my  friend,  the  Rev.  Stewart  Head- 
lam,  in  his  admirable  tract  on  Christian  Socialism :  — 

"Turn  your  attention  to  that  series  of  teachings  of  Christ's 
which  we  call  parables  —  comparisons,  that  is  to  say,  between 
what  Christ  saw  going  on  in  the  everyday  world  around  him  and 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  If  by  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  in  these 
parables  is  meant  a  place  up  in  the  clouds,  or  merely  a  state  in 
which  people  will  be  after  death,  then  I  challenge  you  to  get  any 
kind  of  meaning  out  of  them  whatever.  But  if  by  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  is  meant  (as  it  is  clear  from  other  parts  of  Christ's 
teaching  is  the  case)  the  righteous  Society  to  be  established 
upon  earth,  then  they  all  have  a  plain  and  beautiful  meaning; 
a  meaning  well  summed  up  in  that  saying  so  often  quoted  against 
us  by  the  sceptic  and  the  atheist,' Seek  ye  first  the  Kingdom  of 
God  and  His  righteousness,  and  all  these  things  shall  be  added 
unto  you';  or  in  other  words,  live,  Christ  said,  all  of  you 
together,  not  each  of  you  by  himself;  live  as  members  of  the 
righteous  society  which  I  have  come  to  found  upon  earth,  and 
then  you  will  be  clothed  as  beautifully  as  the  Eastern  lily  and 
fed  as  surely  as  the  birds." 

This  is  not  simply  the  Christian  ideal  of  society,  it  is  the 
ideal  of  every  right-thinking  man,  of  every  man  with  a 
full  sense  of  beauty.  You  will  find  it  rendered  in  two 
imperishably  beautiful  Utopias  of  our  own  time,  both, 
I  glory  to  write,  by  Englishmen :  the  News  from  Nowhere 
of  William  Morris  and  Hudson's  exquisite  Crystal  Age. 
Both  these  present  practically  Anarchist  states,  both 
assume  idealized  human  beings,  beings  finer,  simpler, 


240  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

nobler  than  the  heated,  limited,  and  striving  poor  souls 
who  thrust  and  suffer  among  the  stresses  of  this  present 
life.  And  the  present  writer  too  —  I  must  mention  him 
here  to  guard  against  a  confusion  in  the  future — when 
a  little  while  ago  he  imagined  humanity  exalted  morally 
and  intellectually  by  the  brush  of  a  comet's  tail,^  pre- 
sented not  a  Socialist  state,  but  a  glorious  Anar- 
chism, as  the  outcome  of  that  rejuvenescence  of  the 
world. 

But  the  business  of  Socialism  lies  at  a  lower  level  and 
concerns  immediate  things;  our  material  is  the  world 
as  it  is,  full  of  unjust  laws,  bad  traditions,  bad  habits, 
inherited  diseases  and  weaknesses,  germs  and  poisons, 
filths  and  envies.  We  are  not  dealing  with  magnifi- 
cent creatures  such  as  one  sees  in  ideal  paintings  and 
splendid  sculpture,  so  beautiful  they  may  face  the  world 
naked  and  unashamed;  we  are  dealing  with  hot-eared, 
ill-kempt  people,  who  are  liable  to  indigestion,  baldness, 
corpulence,  and  fluctuating  tempers,  who  wear  top  hats 
and  bowler  hats  or  hats  kept  on  by  hatpins  (and  so  with 
all  the  other  necessary  clothing);  who  are  pitiful  and 
weak  and  vain  and  touchy  almost  beyond  measure,  and 
very  naughty  and  intemperate ;  who  have,  alas !  to  be 
bound  over  to  be  in  any  degree  faithful  and  just  to  one 
another.  To  strip  such  people  suddenly  of  law  and 
*  In  the  Days  of  the  Comet.     (Macmillan  and  Co.,  1906.) 


REVOLUTIONARY  SOCIALISM  241 

restraint  would  be  as  dreadful  and  ugly  as  stripping 
the  clothes  from  their  poor  bodies. 

That  Anarchist  world,  I  admit,  is  our  dream ,'  we  do  be- 
lieve— well,  I,  at  any  rate,  believe  —  this  present  world, 
this  planet,  will  some  day  bear  a  race  beyond  our  most 
exalted  and  temerarious  dreams,  a  race  begotten  of  our 
wills  and  the  substance  of  our  bodies,  a  race,  so  I  have  said 
it,  "  who  will  stand  upon  the  earth  as  one  stands  upon  a 
footstool  and  laugh  and  reach  out  their  hands  amidst 
the  stars,"  but  the  way  to  that  is  through  education  and 
discipline  and  law.  Socialism  is  the  preparation  for  that 
higher  Anarchism;  painfully,  laboriously  we  mean  to 
destroy  false  ideas  of  property  and  self,  eliminate  unjust 
laws  and  poisonous  and  hateful  suggestions  and  preju- 
dices, create  a  system  of  social  right-dealing  and  a 
tradition  of  right  feeling  and  acting.  Socialism  is  the 
schoolroom  of  true  and  noble  Anarchism,  wherein  by 
training  and  restraint  we  shall  make  free  men. 

There  is  a  graceful  and  all  too  little  known  fable  by 
Mr.  Max  Beerbohm,  The  Happy  Hypocrite,  which  gives, 
I  think,  not  only  the  relation  of  Socialism  to  philosophic 
Anarchism,  but  of  all  discipline  to  all  idealism.  It  is 
the  story  of  a  beautiful  mask  that  was  worn  by  a  man 
in  love,  until  he  tired  even  of  that  much  of  deceit  and, 
a  little  desperately,  threw  it  aside  —  to  find  his  own  face 
beneath  changed  to  the  likeness  of  the  self  he  had 


242  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

desired.  So  would  we  veil  the  greed,  the  suspicion  of  the 
self-seeking  scramble  of  to-day  under  institutions  and 
laws  that  will  cry  ''duty  and  service"  in  the  ears  and 
eyes  of  all  mankind,  keep  down  the  evil  so  long  and  so 
effectually  that  at  last  law  will  be  habit,  and  greed  and 
self-seeking  cease  forever  from  being  the  ruling  impulse 
of  the  world.  Socialism  is  the  mask  that  will  mould  the 
world  to  that  better  Anarchism  of  good  men's  dreams. 
But  these  are  long  views,  glimpses  beyond  the  Socialist 
horizon.  The  people  who  would  set  up  Anarchism  to-day 
are  people  without  human  experience  or  any  tempering 
of  humour,  only  one  shade  less  impossible  than  the  odd 
one-sided  queer  beings  one  meets,  ridiculously  inacces- 
sible to  laughter,  who  invite  one  to  set  up  consciously 
with  them  in  the  business  of  being  Overmen,  to  rule  a 
world  full  of  our  betters,  by  fraud  and  force.  It  is  a 
vile  teaching  saved  only  from  being  horrible  by  being 
utterly  asinine.  For  us  the  best  is  faith  and  humility, 
truth  and  service ;  our  utmost  glory  is  to  have  seen  the 
vision  and  to  have  failed  —  not  altogether.  .  .  .  For 
ourselves  and  such  as  we  are,  let  us  not  "deal  in  pride," 
let  us  be  glad  to  learn  a  little  of  this  spirit  of  service, 
to  achieve  a  little  humility,  to  give  ourselves  to  the  mak- 
ing of  Socialism  and  the  civilized  State  without  pre- 
sumption —  as  children  who  are  glad  they  may  help  in 
a  work  greater  than  themselves,  and  the  toys  that  have 
heretofore  engaged  them. 


CHAPTER  XII 

ADMINISTRATIVE   SOCIALISM 
§1 

Marx  gave  to  Socialism  a  theory  of  world-wide  social 
development,  and  rescued  it  altogether  from  the  eccen- 
tric and  localized  associations  of  its  earliest  phases;  he 
brought  it  so  near  to  reality  that  it  could  appear  as  a 
force  in  politics,  embodied  first  as  the  International 
Association  of  Working  Men,  and  then  as  the  Social- 
Democratic  movement  of  the  continent  of  Europe  that 
commands  to-day  over  a  third  of  the  entire  poll  of 
German  voters.  So  much  Marx  did  for  Socialism.  But 
if  he  broadened  its  application  to  the  world,  he  nar- 
rowed its  range  to  only  the  economic  aspect  of  life. 
He  arrested  for  a  time  the  discussion  of  its  biological 
and  moral  aspects  altogether.  He  left  it  an  incomplete 
doctrine  of  merely  economic  reconstruction  supple- 
mented by  mystical  democracy,  and  both  its  mysti- 
cism and  incompleteness,  while  they  offered  no  diffi- 
culties to  a  labouring  man  ignorant  of  affairs,  rendered 

243 


244  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

it  unsubstantial  and  unattractive  to  people  who  had  any 
real  knowledge  of  administration. 

It  was  left  chiefly  to  the  little  group  of  English  people 
who  founded  the  Fabian  Society  to  supply  a  third  system 
of  ideas  to  the  amplifying  conception  of  Socialism,  to 
convert  Revolutionary  Socialism  into  administrative 
Socialism. 

This  new  development  was  essentially  the  outcome  of 
the  reaction  of  its  broad  suggestions  of  economic  recon- 
struction upon  the  circle  of  thought  of  one  or  two  young 
officials  of  genius  and  of  one  or  two  members  of  that 
politic-social  stratum  of  society,  the  English  "gov- 
erning class."  I  make  this  statement,  I  may  say,  in  the 
loosest  possible  spirit.  The  reaction  is  one  that  was  not 
confined  to  England ;  it  was  to  some  extent  inevitable 
wherever  the  new  movement  in  thought  became  ac- 
cessible to  intelligent  administrators  and  officials.  But 
in  the  peculiar  atmosphere  of  British  public  life,  with  its 
remarkable  blend  of  individual  initiative  and  a  lively 
sense  of  the  state,  this  reaction  has  had  the  freest  devel- 
opment. There  was,  indeed,  Fabianism  before  the  Fa- 
bian Society ;  it  would  be  ingratitude  to  some  of  the  most 
fruitful  social  work  of  the  middle  Victorian  period  to 
ignore  the  way  in  which  it  has  contributed  in  suggestion 
and  justification  to  the  Socialist  synthesis.  The  city  of 
Birmingham,  for  example,  developed  the  most  exten- 


ADMINISTRATIVE   SOCIALISM  245 

sive  process  of  municipalization  as  the  mere  common- 
sense  of  local  patriotism.  But  the  movement  was  with- 
out formulae  and  correlation  until  the  Fabians  came. 

That  unorganized,  unpaid  public  service  of  public- 
spirited  aristocrats  and  wealthy  financial  and  business 
people,  the  "governing  class,"  which  dominated  the 
British  Empire  throughout  the  nineteenth  century,  has, 
through  the  absence  of  definite  class  boundaries  in 
England  and  the  readiness  of  each  class  to  take  its  tone 
from  the  class  above,  given  a  unique  quality  to 
British  thought  upon  public  questions,  and  to  British 
conceptions  of  Socialism.  It  has  made  the  British  mind 
as  a  whole  "administrative."  As  compared  with  the 
American  mind,  for  example,  the  British  is  state-con- 
scious, the  American  state-blind.  The  American  is,  no 
doubt,  intensely  patriotic,  but  the  nation  and  the  state 
to  which  his  patriotism  points  is  something  overhead 
and  comprehensive  Hke  the  sky,  like  a  flag  hoisted,  some- 
thing, indeed,  that  not  only  does  not  but  must  not  inter- 
fere with  his  ordinary  business  occupations.  To  have 
public  spirit,  to  be  aware  of  the  state  as  a  whole,  and  to 
have  an  administrative  feeling  toward  it,  is  necessarily 
to  be  accessible  to  constructive  ideas, — that  is  to  say,  to 
Socialistic  ideas.  In  the  history  of  thought  in  Victorian 
Great  Britain,  one  sees  a  constant  conflict  of  this  ad- 
ministrative disposition  with  the  individualistic    com- 


246  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

mercialism  of  the  aggressively  trading  and  manufacturing 
class,  the  class  that  in  America  reigns  unchallenged  to 
this  day.  In  the  latter  country  Individualism  reigns 
unchallenged,  it  is  assumed;  in  the  former  it  has 
fought  an  uphill  fight  against  the  traditions  of  Church 
and  State,  and  has  never  absolutely  prevailed.  The 
political  economists  and  Herbert  Spencer  were  its 
prophets,  and  they  never  at  any  time  held  the  public 
mind  in  any  invincible  grip.  Since  the  eighties  that 
grip  has  weakened  altogether.  Socialistic  thought 
and  legislation,  therefore,  was  going  on  in  Great 
Britain  through  all  the  Victorian  period.  Neverthe- 
less, it  was  the  Fabian  Society  that,  in  the  eighties 
and  through  the  intellectual  impetus  of  at  most  four 
or  five  personalities,  really  brought  this  obstinately 
administrative  spirit  in  British  affairs  into  relation  with 
Socialism  as  such. 

The  dominant  intelligence  of  this  group  was  Mr.  Sid- 
ney Webb,  and  as  I  think  of  him  thus  coming  after  Marx 
to  develop  the  third  phase  of  Socialism,  I  am  struck  by 
the  contrast  with  the  big-bearded  Socialist  leaders  of  the 
earlier  school  and  this  small,  active  figure  with  the  finely 
shaped  head,  the  little  imperial  under  the  lip,  the 
glasses,  the  slightly  lisping,  insinuating  voice.  He 
emerged  as  a  Colonial  Office  clerk  of  conspicuous  energy 
and  capacity  J  and  he  was  already  the  leader  and  "idea 


ADMINISTRATIVE   SOCIALISM  247 

factory"  of  the  Fabian  Society  when  he  married  Miss 
Beatrice  Potter,  a  briUiant  student  of  sociological  ques- 
tions. Both  he  and  she  are  devotees  to  social  service, 
living  laborious,  ordered,  austere,  incessant  lives,  making 
the  employment  of  secretaries  their  one  extravagance  and 
alternations  between  research  and  affairs  their  change 
of  occupation. 

A  new  type  of  personality  altogether  they  were 
in  the  Socialist  movement,  which  had  hitherto  been 
richer  in  eloquence  than  discipline.  And  during  the 
past  twenty  years  of  the  work  of  the  Fabian  Society, 
through  their  influence,  one  dominant  question  has  pre- 
vailed. Assuming  the  truth  of  the  two  main  generali- 
zations of  Socialism,  taking  that  statement  of  inten- 
tion for  granted,  how  is  the  thing  to  be  done?  They 
put  aside  the  glib  assurances  of  the  revolutionary  Social- 
ists that  everything  would  be  all  right  when  the  People 
came  to  their  own  and  so  earned  for  themselves  the  un- 
dying resentment  of  all  those  who  believe  the  world  is 
to  be  effectually  mended  by  a  liberal  use  of  chest  notes 
and  red  flags.  They  insisted  that  the  administrative 
and  economic  methods  of  the  future  must  be  a  secular 
development  of  existing  institutions,  and  inaugurated  a 
process  of  study, —  which  has  long  passed  beyond  the 
range  of  the  Fabian  Society,  broadening  out  with  the 
organized  work  of  the  school  of  economics  and  of  a  grow- 


248  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

ing  volume  of  university  study  in  England  and  America, 
—  to  the  end  that  this  "howf"  should  be  answered. 

The  broad  lines  of  the  process  of  transition  from  the 
present  state  of  affairs  to  the  Socialist  state  of  the  future 
as  they  are  developed  by  administrative  Socialism  lie 
along  the  following  lines: — 

1.  The  peaceful  and  systematic  taking  over  from 
private  enterprise,  by  purchase  or  otherwise,  either  by 
the  national  or  by  the  municipal  authorities,  as  may  be 
most  convenient,  of  the  great  common  services  of  land, 
control,  mining,  transit,  food-supply,  the  drink  trade, 
lighting,  force-supply,  and  the  like. 

2.  Secular  expropriation  of  private  owners  by  death- 
duties  and  increased  taxation. 

3.  The  exploitation  of  all  new  social  services  by  the 
public  authorities  and  not  by  private  enterprise,  the  pre- 
vention, that  is  to  say,  of  any  additions  to  the  present 
bulk  of  privately  owned  property. 

4.  The  building  up  of  a  great  scientifically  organized 
administrative  machinery  to  carry  on  these  enlarging 
public  functions. 

5.  A  steady  increase  and  expansion  of  public  edu- 
cation, research,  museums,  libraries,  and  all  such  public 
services.  The  systematic  promotion  of  measures  for 
raising  the  school-leaving  age,  for  the  public  feeding  of 
school  children,  for  the  provision  of  public  baths,  parks, 
playgrounds,  and  the  like. 


ADMINISTRATIVE   SOCIALISM  249 

6.  The  systematic  creation  of  a  great  service  of  public 
health  to  take  over  the  disorganized  confusion  of  hospi- 
tals and  other  charities,  sanitary  authorities,  officers  of 
health  and  private  enterprise  medical  men. 

7.  The  recognition  of  the  claim  of  every  citizen  to 
welfare  by  measures  for  the  support  of  mothers  and  chil- 
dren, and  by  the  establishment  of  old-age  pensions. 

8.  The  systematic  raising  of  the  minimum  standard  of 
life  by  factory  and  labour  legislation,  and  particularly 
by  the  establishment  of  a  minimum  wage.  .  .  . 

These  are  the  broad  forms  of  the  Fabian  Socialist's 
answer  to  the  question  of  how,  with  which  the  revolu- 
tionary Socialist's  were  confronted.  The  diligent  stu- 
dent of  Socialism  will  find  all  these  proposals  worked  out 
to  a  very  practicable-looking  pitch,  indeed,  in  that 
Bible  of  Progressive  Socialism,  the  collected  tracts  of 
the  Fabian  Society,^  and  to  that  volume  I  must  refer 
him.  The  theory  of  the  minimum  standard  and  the 
minimum  wage  is  explained,  moreover,  with  the  utmost 
lucidity  in  that  Socialist  classic.  Industrial  Democracy, 
by  Sidney  and  Beatrice  Webb. 

§2 

Every  movement  has  the  defects  of  its  virtues,    and 
it  is  not  perhaps  very  remarkable  that  the  Fabian  Society 
» Fabian  Tracts.     (Fabian  Society,  4/6.) 


250  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

of  the  eighties  and  nineties,  having  introduced  the  con- 
ception of  the  historical  continuity  of  institutions  into  the 
propaganda  of  Sociahsm,  did  certainly  for  a  time  greatly 
overaccentuate  that  conception  and  draw  away  atten- 
tion from  aspects  that  may  be  ultimately  more  essential. 
Beginning  with  the  proposition  that  the  institu- 
tions and  formulae  of  the  future  must  necessarily  be 
developed  from  those  of  the  present,  that  one  cannot 
start  de  novo  even  after  a  revolution;  one  may  easily 
end  in  an  attitude  of  excessive  conservatism  toward 
existing  machinery.  In  spite  of  the  presence  of  such 
fine  and  original  intelligences  as  Mr.  Sydney  Olivier  and 
Mr.  Graham  Wallas  in  the  Fabian  counsels,  there  can  be 
no  denial  that  for  the  first  twenty  years  of  the  society's 
career,  Mr.  Webb  was  the  prevailing  Fabian.  Now  his 
is  a  mind  legal  as  well  as  creative,  and  at  times  his  legal 
side  quite  overcomes  his  constructive  element;  he  is 
extraordinarily  fertile  in  expedients  and  skilful  in  adap- 
tation, and  with  a  real  dread  of  open  destruction.  This 
statement  by  no  means  exhausts  him,  but  it  does  to  a 
large  extent  convey  the  qualities  that  were  uppermost 
in  the  earlier  years,  at  any  rate,  of  his  influence.  His 
insistence  upon  continuity  pervaded  the  society,  was 
reechoed  and  intensified  by  others,  and  developed  into 
something  like  a  mania  for  achieving  Socialism  without 
the  overt  change  of  any  existing  ruling  body.     His  im- 


ADMINISTRATIVE   SOCIALISM  251 

petus  carried  this  reaction  against  the  crude  democratic 
idea  to  its  extremest  opposite.  There  arose  Webbites 
more  Webbish  than  Webb.  From  saying  that  the  un- 
organized people  cannot  achieve  Socialism,  they  passed 
to  the  implication  that  organization  alone,  without 
popular  support,  might  achieve  Socialism.  Socialism  was 
to  arrive,  as  it  were,  insidiously. 

To  some  minds  this  new  proposal  has  the  charm  of  a 
schoolboy's  first  dark-lantern.  Socialism  ceased  to  be 
an  open  revolution,  and  became  a  plot.  Functions 
were  to  be  shifted,  quietly,  unostentatiously,  from  the 
representative  to  the  official  he  appointed;  a  bureau- 
cracy was  to  slip  into  power  through  the  mechanical 
difficulties  of  an  administration  by  debating  represen- 
tatives ;  and  since  these  officials  would  by  the  nature  of 
their  positions  constitute  a  scientific  bureaucracy,  and 
since  Socialism  is  essentially  scientific  government  as 
distinguished  from  haphazard  government,  they  would 
necessarily  run  the  country  on  the  lines  of  a  pretty  dis- 
tinctly undemocratic  Socialism. 

The  process  went  even  further  than  secretiveness  in 
its  reaction  from  the  large  rhetorical  forms  of  revolution- 
ary Socialism.  There  arose  even  a  repudiation  of  "  prin- 
ciples" of  action,  and  a  type  of  worker  which  proclaimed 
itself  "Opportunist-Socialist."  It  was  another  instance 
of  Socialism  losing  sight  of  itself ;  it  was  a  process  quite 


252  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

parallel  at  the  other  extreme  with  the  self-contradiction 
of  the  Anarchist-Socialist.  Socialism  as  distinguished 
from  a  mere  Liberalism,  for  example,  is  an  organized  plan 
for  social  reconstruction,  while  Liberalism  relies  upon 
certain  vague  "principles";  it  declares  that  good  in- 
tentions and  doing  first-hand  things  and  obvious  things 
will  not  suffice.  Now  Opportunism  is  essentially  benevo- 
lent adventure  and  the  doing  of  first-hand  things. 

This  conception  of  indifference  to  the  forms  of  govern- 
ment, of  accepting  whatever  governing  bodies  existed 
and  using  them  to  create  officials  and  get  something  done 
was  at  once  immediately  fruitful  in  many  directions,  and 
presently  productive  of  many  very  grave  difficulties  in 
the  path  of  advancing  Socialism.  Mr.  Webb,  himself,  de- 
voted immense  industry  and  capacity  to  the  London 
County  Council;  it  is  impossible  to  measure  the  share 
he  has  had  in  securing  such  great  public  utilities  as  water- 
supply,  traction,  and  electric  supply,  for  example,  from 
complete  exploitation  by  private  profit-seekers,  but  cer- 
tainly it  is  a  huge  one,  and  throughout  England  and 
presently  in  America,  there  went  on  a  collateral  activity 
of  Fabian  Socialists.  They  worked  like  a  ferment  in 
municipal  politics,  encouraging  and  developing  local 
pride  and  local  enterprise  in  public  works.  In  the  case 
of  large  public  bodies,  working  in  suitable  areas  and 
commanding  the  services  of  men  of  high  quality,  striking 


ADMINISTRATIVE   SOCIALISM  253 

advances  in  social  organization  were  made,  but  in  the 
case  of  smaller  bodies  in  unsuitable  districts  and  with  no 
attractions  for  people  of  gifts  and  training,  the  influence 
of  Fabianism  did  on  the  whole  produce  effects  that  have 
tended  to  discredit  Socialism.  Aggressive,  ignorant  and 
untrained  men  and  women,  persons  too  often  of  wavering 
purpose  and  doubtful  honesty,  got  themselves  elected 
in  a  state  of  enthusiasm  to  undertake  public  functions 
and  challenge  private  enterprise  under  conditions  that 
doomed  them  to  waste  and  failure.  This  was  the  case  in 
endless  Parish  Councils  and  Urban  Districts ;  it  was  also 
the  case  in  many  London  Boroughs.  It  has  to  be 
admitted  by  Socialists  with  infinite  regret  that  the  com- 
mon borough  council  Socialist  is  too  often  a  lamentable 
misrepresentative  of  the  Socialist  idea. 

The  creation  of  the  London  Borough  Councils  found 
English  Socialism  unprepared.  They  were  bodies 
doomed  by  their  nature  to  incapacity  and  waste.  They 
represented  neither  natural  communities  nor  any 
practicable  administrative  unit  of  area.  Their  creation 
was  the  result  of  quite  silly  political  considerations.  The 
slowness  with  which  Socialists  have  realized  that  for 
the  larger  duties  that  they  wish  to  have  done  collectively 
a  new  scheme  of  administration  is  necessary,  that  bodies 
created  to  sweep  the  streets,  and  admirably  adapted  to 
that  duty,  may  be  conspicuously  not  adapted  to  supply 


254  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

electric  power  or  administer  education,  is  accountable 
for  much  disheartening  bungling.  Instead  of  taking 
a  clear  line  from  the  outset,  and  denouncing  these  glori- 
fied vestries  as  useless,  impossible,  and  entirely  unscien- 
tific organs,  the  Socialists  under  the  influence  of  the  earlier 
Fabianism  tried  to  claim  Bumble  as  their  friend  and  use 
him  as  their  tool.  And  Bumble  turned  out  to  be  a  very 
bad  friend  and  a  very  poor  tool.  .  .  . 

In  all  these  matters  the  real  question  at  issue  is  one 
between  the  emergency  and  the  implement.  One  may 
illustrate  by  a  simple  comparison.  Suppose  there  is  a 
need  to  dig  a  hole  and  that  there  is  no  spade  available, 
a  Fabian  with  Mr.  Webb's  gifts  becomes  invaluable. 
He  seizes  upon  a  broken  old  cricket  bat,  let  us  say,  uses 
it  with  admirable  wit  and  skill,  and  presto !  there  is  the 
hole  made  and  the  moral  taught  that  one  need  not 
always  wait  for  spades  before  digging  holes.  It  is  a 
lesson  that  Socialism  stood  in  need  of,  and  which  hence- 
forth it  will  always  bear  in  mind.  But  suppose  we 
want  to  dig  a  dozen  holes,  it  may  be  worth  while  to  spend 
a  little  time  in  going  to  beg,  borrow,  or  buy  a  spade.  If 
we  have  to  dig  holes  indefinitely,  day  after  day,  it  will 
be  sheer  foolishness  sticking  to  the  bat.  It  will  be 
worth  while  then  not  simply  to  get  a  spade,  but  to  get 
just  the  right  sort  of  spade  in  size  and  form  that  the  soil 
requires,  to  get  the  proper  means  of  sharpening  and 


ADMINISTRATIVE  SOCIALISM  255 

repairing  the  spade,  to  insure  a  proper  supply.  Or  to 
point  the  comparison,  the  reconstruction  of  our  legisla- 
tive and  local  government  machinery  is  a  necessary  pre- 
liminary to  Socialization  in  many  directions.  Mr.  Webb 
has  very  effectually  admitted  that,  is  in  fact  himself 
leading  us  away  from  that  by  taking  up  the  study 
of  local  government  as  his  principal  occupation,  but 
the  typical  "Webbite"  of  the  Fabian  Society,  who  is 
very  much  to  Webb  what  the  Marxist  is  to  Marx,  en- 
tranced by  his  leader's  skill,  still  clings  to  the  earlier 
Fabian  ideal.  He  dreams  of  the  most  foxy  and  won- 
derful digging  by  means  of  box-lids,  tablespoons,  dish- 
covers  —  anything  but  spades  designed  and  made  for 
the  job  in  hand  —  just  as  he  dreams  of  an  extensive 
expropriation  of  landlords  by  a  legislature  that  includes 
the  House  of  Lords.  .  .  . 


§3 

It  was  only  at  the  very  end  of  the  nineteenth  century 
that  the  Fabian  Socialist  movement  was  at  all  quickened 
to  the  need  of  political  reconstruction  as  extensive  as  the 
economic  changes  it  advocated,  and  it  is  still  far  from  a 
complete  apprehension  of  the  importance  of  the  political 
problem.  To  begin  with,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Webb  (receding 
a  little  from  Fabian  Society  affairs  and  becoming  more 


256  NEW   WORLDS   FOR   OLD 

and  more  purely  scientific  in  spirit)  took  up  the  study 
of  local  government  and  commenced  that  colossal  task 
that  still  engages  them,  their  book  upon  English  Local 
Government,  of  which  there  has  as  yet  appeared  (1907) 
only  one  volume  out  of  seven.  (Immense  as  this  service 
is,  it  is  only  one  part  of  conjoint  activities  that  will  ul- 
timately give  constructive  social  conceptions  an  enor- 
mous armoury  of  scientifically  arranged  fact.) 

As  the  outcome  of  certain  private  experiences,  the 
moral  of  which  was  pointed  by  discussion  with  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Webb,  the  present  writer  in  1902  put  before  the 
Fabian  Society  a  paper  on  Administrative  Areas  ^  in 
which  he  showed  clearly  that  the  character  and  efficiency 
and  possibilities  of  a  governing  body  depend  almost  en- 
tirely upon  the  size  and  quality  of  the  constituency  it 
represents  and  the  area  it  administers.  This  may  be 
stated  with  something  approaching  scientific  confidence. 
A  local  governing  body  for  too  small  an  area  or  elected 
upon  an  unsound  franchise  cannot  be  efficient.  But  ob- 
viously before  you  can  transfer  property  from  private 
to  collective  control  you  must  have  something  in  the 
way  of  a  governing  institution  with  a  reasonably  good 
chance  of  developing  into  an  efficient  controlling  body. 
The  leading   conception   of   this  Administrative  Area 

*  See  Appendix  to  Mankind  in  the  Making.  (Chapman  and  Hall, 
1903.) 


ADMINISTRATIVE  SOCIALISM  257 

paper  appeared  subsequently  running  through  a  series  of 
tracts,  The  New  Heptarchy  Series,  in  which  one  finds  it 
applied  first  to  this  group  of  administrative  problems  and 
then  to  that/  These  tracts  are  remarkable  if  only  be- 
cause they  present  the  first  systematic  recognition  on 
the  part  of  any  organized  Socialist  body  of  the  fact  that 
a  scientific  reconstruction  of  the  methods  of  government 
constitute  a  necessary  part  of  the  complete  Socialist 
scheme,  the  first  recognition  of  the  widening  scope  of 
the  Socialist  design  that  makes  it  again  a  deliberately 
constructive  project. 

It  is  only  an  initial  recognition,  a  mere  first  raid  into 
a  great  new  unexplored  province  of  study.  This  prov- 
ince is,  in  the  broadest  terms,  social  psychology.  A 
huge  amount  of  thought,  discussion,  experiment,  is  to 
be  done  in  this  field  —  needs  imperatively  to  be  done 
before  the  process  of  the  socialization  of  economic  life 
can  go  very  far  beyond  its  present  attainments.  Ex- 
cept for  these  first  admissions.  Socialism  has  concerned 
itself  only  with  the  material  reorganization  of  society 
and  its  social  consequences,  with  economic  changes  and 
the  reaction  of  these  changes  on  administrative  work; 

'  1.  Municipalization  by  Provinces.  2.  On  the  Reform  of 
Municipal  Service.  3.  Public  Control  of  Electric  Power  and  Tran- 
sit. 4.  The  Revival  of  Agriculture ;  a  National  Policy  for  Great 
Britain.  5.  The  Abolition  of  Poor  Law  Guardians.  Others  to  fol- 
low.    (Fabian  Society,  1905-1906.) 


258  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

it  has  either  accepted  existing  intellectual  conditions  and 
political  institutions  as  beyond  its  control,  or  assumed 
that  they  will  obediently  modify  as  economic  and  ad- 
ministrative necessity  dictates.  Declare  the  Social 
revolution,  we  were  told  in  a  note  of  cheery  optimism,  by 
the  Marxist  apostles,  and  political  institutions  will 
come  like  flowers  in  May !  Achieve  your  expropriation, 
said  the  early  Fabians,  get  your  network  of  skilled 
experts  spread  over  the  country,  and  your  political  forms, 
your  public  opinion,  your  collective  soul  will  not  trouble 
you.  The  student  of  history  knows  better.  These 
confident  claims  ignore  the  psychological  factors  in 
government  and  human  association;  they  disregard  a 
network  of  difhcultics  that  lie  directly  in  our  way. 
SociaHsts  have  to  face  the  facts :  firstly,  that  the  political 
and  intellectual  institutions  of  the  present  time  belong 
to  the  present  condition  of  things,  and  that  the  intel- 
lectual methods,  machinery,  and  political  institutions  of 
the  better  future  must  almost  inevitably  be  of  a  very 
difTerent  type;  secondly,  that  such  institutions  will  not 
come  about  of  themselves  —  which  indeed  is  the  old 
superstition  of  laissez-faire  in  a  new  form  —  but  must  be 
thought  out,  planned,  and  organized  just  as  completely 
as  economic  socialization  has  had  to  be  planned  and  or- 
ganized; and  thirdly,  that  so  far  Socialism  has  evolved 
scarcely  any  generalizations  even,  that  may  be  made  the 


ADMINISTRATIVE   SOCIALISM  259 

basis  of  new  intellectual  and  governmental  —  as  dis- 
tinguished from  administrative  —  methods.  It  has 
preached  collective  ownership  and  collective  control,  and 
it  has  only  begun  to  recognize  that  this  implies  the  neces- 
sity of  a  collective  will  and  new  means  and  methods 
altogether  for  the  collective  mind. 

The  administrative  Socialism  which  Mr.  Webb  and 
the  Fabian  Society  developed  upon  a  modification  of  the 
broad  generalizations  of  the  Marx  phase  is,  as  it  were, 
no  more  than  the  first  courses  above  those  foundations 
of  Socialism.  It  supplies  us  with  a  conception  of 
methods  of  transition  and  with  a  vision  of  a  great  and 
disciplined  organization  of  officials,  a  scientific  bureau- 
cracy appointed  by  representative  bodies  of  dimin- 
ishing activity  and  importance,  and  coming  to  be  at 
last  the  real  working  control  of  the  Socialist  state.  But 
it  says  nothing  of  what  is  above  the  officials,  what  drives 
the  officials.  It  is  palace  without  living  rooms,  with 
nothing  but  offices,  —  a  machine,  as  yet  unprovided  with 
a  motor.  No  doubt  we  must  have  that  organization  of 
officials  if  we  mean  to  bring  about  a  Socialist  state,  but 
the  mind  recoils  with  something  like  terror  from  the 
conceptions  of  a  state  run  and  ruled  by  officials,  terminat- 
ing in  officials,  with  an  official  as  its  highest  expression. 
One  has  a  vision  of  a  community  with  blue-books  in- 
stead of  a  literature,  and  inspectors  instead  of  a  con- 


260  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

science.  The  mystical  democracy  of  the  Marxist, 
though  manifestly  impossible,  had  in  it  something 
attractive,  something  humanly  and  desperately  pug- 
nacious, and  generous,  something  indeed  heroic;  the 
bureaucracy  of  the  Webbite,  though  far  more  attainable, 
is  infinitely  less  inspiring.  But  that  may  be  because 
the  inspiring  elements  remain  to  be  stated  rather  than 
that  these  practical  constructive  projects  are  in  their 
nature,  and  incurably,  hard  and  narrow.  Instead  of 
a  gorgeous  flare  in  the  darkness,  we  have  the  first  cold 
onset  of  daylight  heralding  the  sun.  If  the  letter  of  the 
teaching  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Webb  is  bureaucracy,  that  is 
certainly  not  the  spirit  of  their  lives.  The  earlier 
Socialists  gave  Socialism  substance,  rudis  indigestaque 
moles,  but  noble  stuff;  Administrative  Socialism  gave  it 
a  physical  structure  and  nerves,  defined  its  organs  and 
determined  its  functions :  it  remains  for  the  Socialist  of 
to-day  to  realize  in  this  shaping  body  of  the  civilized 
state  of  the  future  the  breath  of  life  already  unconfessedly 
there,  to  state  in  clear  terms  the  reality  for  which  our 
plans  are  made,  by  which  alone  they  can  be  reahzed; 
that  is  to  say,  the  collective  mind  of  humxinity,  the  soul 
and  moral  being  of  mankind. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

CONSTRUCTIVE  SOCIALISM 
§1 

Such  an  idea  as  Socialism,  fundamentally  true  to  the 
needs  of  life  and  arising  as  it  does  from  the  inevitable 
suggestion  of  very  widely  dispersed  evils  and  insufficien- 
cies, does  not  spring  from  any  one  source,  nor  develop 
along  any  single  line.  It  breaks  out  like  a  smouldering 
fire,  first  taking  on  one  form  of  expression  and  then 
another,  now  under  this  name  and  now  under  that. 

The  manifest  new  possibilities  created  by  the  progress 
of  applied  science,  the  inevitable  change  of  scale  and 
of  the  size  and  conception  of  a  community  that  arises 
out  of  them,  necessitate  at  least  the  material  form  of 
Socialism ;  that  is  to  say,  the  replacement  of  individual 
action  by  public  organization,  first  here,  then  there,  in 
spite  of  a  hundred  vested  interests.  The  age  that  re- 
garded Herbert  Spencer  as  its  greatest  philosopher,  for 
example,  was  urged  nevertheless,  unwillingly  and  pro- 
testingly,  but  effectually,  through  phase  after  phase 
of  more  and  more  coordinated  voluntary  effort,  until 
at  last  it  had  to  undertake  a  complete  system  of  or- 

261 


262  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

ganized  free  public  primary  education.  There  the  mov- 
ing finger  of  change  halts  not  a  moment;  already  it  is 
going  on  to  secondary  education,  to  schemes  for  a  com- 
plete public  educational  organization  from  reformatory 
school  up  to  professorial  chair.  The  practical  logic 
of  the  case  is  invincible. 

So,  too,  the  public  organization  of  scientific  research 
goes  on  steadily  against  all  prejudices  and  social  theories, 
and,  in  a  very  difTerent  field,  the  plain  inconveniences  of 
a  private  control  of  traffic  in  America  and  England 
alike,  force  the  affected  property-owners  whose  busi- 
nesses are  hampered  and  damaged  toward  the  realization 
that  freedom  of  private  property,  in  these  services  at 
least,  is  evil,  and  must  end.  Then  again,  the  movement 
for  public  sanitation  and  hygiene  spreads  and  broadens, 
and  the  natural  alarm  of  even  the  most  conservative  at 
the  falling  birth-rate  and  the  stationary  infantile  death- 
rate  is  evidently  ripening  for  an  advance  toward  public 
control  and  care  even  in  the  relation  of  child  to  parent, 
the  most  intimate  of  all  personal  affairs. 

Inevitably  all  such  movements  must  coalesce, —  their 
spirit  is  one,  the  spirit  of  construction, —  and  inevitably 
their  coalescence  will  take  the  form  of  a  wide  and  gener- 
ous restatement  of  Socialism.  Nothing  but  a  broader 
understanding  of  the  broadening  propositions  of  So- 
cialism is  needed  for  that  recognition  now. 


CONSTRUCTIVE   SOCIALISM  263 

Socialism,  indeed,  does  not  simply  look,  it  appeals  to 
the  constructive  professions  at  the  present  time,  to  the 
medical  man,  the  engineer,  the  architect,  the  scientific 
agriculturist. 

Each  of  these  sorts  of  men,  in  just  so  far  as  he  is  con- 
cerned with  the  reality  of  his  profession,  in  just  so  far 
as  he  is  worthy  of  his  profession,  must  resent  the  con- 
siderations of  private  profit,  of  base  economies,  that 
constantly  limit  and  spoil  his  work  and  services  in  the 
interests  of  a  dividend  or  of  some  financial  manoeuvre. 
So  far  they  have  been  antagonized  toward  Socialism  by 
the  errors  of  its  adherents,  by  the  impression  quite  wan- 
tonly created,  that  Socialism  meant  either  mob  rule  or 
the  rule  of  pedantic,  unsympathetic  officials.  They 
have  heard  too  much  of  democracy,  too  much  of  bureau- 
cracy, and  not  enough  of  construction.  They  have  felt 
that  on  the  whole  the  financial  exploiter,  detestable 
master  as  he  often  is,  was  better  than  the  rule  of  either 
clamour  on  the  one  hand,  or  red  tape  on  the  other.  But 
as  I  have  been  seeking  to  suggest,  mob  rule  and  official 
rule  do  not  exhaust  the  possible  alternatives.  Neither 
ignorant  democracy  nor  narrow  bureaucracy  can  be  the 
destined  rulers  of  a  Socialist  state.  The  only  conceiv- 
able rule  in  a  Socialist  civilization  is  through  the  opera- 
tion of  a  collective  mind  that  must  be  by  its  nature  con- 
structive and  enterprising,  because  only  through  the 


264  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

creation  of  such  a  mind  can  Socialism  be  brought  about. 
A  Sociahst  state  cannot  exist  without  that  mind  existing 
also,  and  a  collective  mind  can  scarcely  appear  without 
some  form  of  Socialism  giving  it  a  material  body.  Now 
it  is  only  under  an  intelligent  collective  mind  that  any  of 
the  dreams  of  these  constructive  professions  can  attain 
an  effective  realization.  Where  will  the  private  profit 
in  a  universal  sanitation,  for  example,  be  found,  in  the 
abolition  of  diseases,  in  the  planned  control  of  the  pub- 
lic health,  in  the  abolition  of  children's  deaths  ?  What 
thought  of  private  gain  will  ever  scrap  our  obsolescent 
railroads  and  our  stagnating  industrial  monopolies  for 
new,  clean  methods  ?  So  long  as  they  pay  a  dividend, 
they  will  keep  on  upon  their  present  lines.  The  modern 
architect  knows,  the  engineer  knows,  we  might  build 
ourselves  perfectly  clean,  smokeless,  magnificent  cities 
to-day,  as  full  of  pure  water  as  ancient  Rome,  as  full  of 
pure  air  as  the  Engadine,  if  private  ow^nership  did  not 
block  the  way.  Who  can  doubt  it  who  understands 
what  a  doctor,  or  an  electrical  engineer,  or  a  real  architect, 
understands?  Surely  all  the  best  men  in  these  pro- 
fessions are  eager  to  get  to  work  on  the  immense  possibili- 
ties of  life,  possibilities  of  things  cleared  up,  of  things 
made  anew,  that  their  training  has  enabled  them  to 
visualize  !  What  stands  in  their  way,  stands  in  our  way ; 
social  disorganization,  individualist  self-seeking,  narrow- 
ness  of  outlook,  self-conceit,  ignorance. 


CONSTRUCTIVE   SOCIALISM  265 

With  that  conception  they  must  surely  turn  in  the  end, 
as  we  SociaHsts  turn,  to  the  most  creative  profession  of 
all,  to  that  great  calling  which  with  each  generation  re- 
news the  world's  "circle  of  ideas,"  —  the  Teachers! 

The  whole  trend  and  purpose  of  this  book  from  the  out- 
set has  been  to  insist  upon  the  mental  quality  of  Socialism, 
to  maintain  that  it  is  a  business  of  conventions  about 
property  and  plans  of  reorganization;  that  is  to  say,  of 
changes  and  expansions  of  the  ideas  of  men,  changes  and 
expansions  of  their  spirit  of  action  and  their  habitual 
circles  of  ideas.  Unless  you  can  change  men's  minds, 
you  cannot  effect  Socialism,  and  when  you  have  made 
clear  and  universal  certain  broad  understandings, 
Socialism  becomes  a  mere  matter  of  science  and  devices 
and  apphed  intelligence.  That  is  the  constructive  So- 
cialist's position.  Logically,  therefore,  he  declares  the 
teacher  master  of  the  situation.  Ultimately,  the  Social- 
ist movement  is  teaching,  and  the  most  important  people 
in  the  world  from  the  Socialist's  point  of  view  are  those 
who  teach — I  mean  of  course,  not  simply  those  who 
teach  in  schools,  but  those  who  teach  in  pulpits,  in  books, 
in  the  press,  in  universities,  and  lecture-theatres,  in 
parliaments  and  councils,  in  discussions  and  associations, 
and  experiments  of  every  sort,  and,  last  in  my  list  but 
most  important  of  all,  those  mothers  and  motherly 
women  who  teach  little  children  in  their  earliest  years. 


266  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

Every  one,  too,  who  enunciates  a  new  and  valid  idea,  or 
works  out  a  new  contrivance,  is  a  teacher  in  this  sense. 
And  these  teachers,  collectively,  perpetually  renew  the 
collective  mind.  In  the  measure  that  in  each  successive 
generation  they  apprehend  Socialism  and  transmit  its 
spirit,  is  Socialism  nearer  its  goal. 

§2 

At  the  present  time  in  America  and  all  the  western 
European  countries,  there  is  a  collective  mind,  a  Public 
Opinion  made  up  of  the  most  adventitious  and  interest- 
ing elements.  It  is  not  even  a  national  or  a  racial 
thing,  it  is  curiously  international,  curiously  responsive 
to  thought  from  every  quarter,  a  something,  vague 
here,  clear  there,  here  diffused,  there  concentrated.  It 
demands  the  closest  attention  from  Socialists,  this 
something,  this  something  which  is  so  hard  to  define  and 
so  impossible  to  deny — civilized  feeling,  the  thought  of 
our  age,  the  mind  of  the  world.  It  has  organs,  it  has 
media,  yet  it  is  as  hard  to  locate  as  the  soul  of  a  man. 
We  know  that  somewhere  in  the  brain  and  body  of  a 
man  lives  his  Self;  that  you  must  preserve  that  brain 
entire,  aerate  it,  nourish  it,  lest  it  die  and  his  whole  being 
die,  and  yet  you  cannot  say  it  is  in  this  cell  or  in  that. 
So  with  an  equal  mystery  of  diffusion  the  mind  of  man- 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SOCIALISM  267 

kind  exists.  No  man,  no  organization,  no  authority, 
can  be  more  than  a  part  of  it.  Twice  at  least  have 
there  been  attempts  of  parts  to  be  the  whole;  the 
Catholic  Church  and  the  Chinese  Academy  have  each  in 
varying  measure  sought  to  play  the  part  of  a  collective 
mind  for  all  humanity,  and  failed.  All  individual 
achievement,  fine  books,  splendid  poems,  great  discov- 
eries, new  generalizations,  lives  of  thought,  are  no  more 
than  flashes  in  this  huge  moral  and  intellectual  being, 
which  grows  now  self-conscious  and  purposeful,  just  as 
a  child  grows  out  of  its  early  self-ignorance  to  an  elusive, 
indefinable,  indisputable  sense  of  itself.  This  collective 
mind  has  to  be  filled  and  nourished  with  the  Socialist 
purpose,  to  receive  and  assimilate  our  great  idea.  That 
is  the  true  work  of  Socialism. 

Consider  the  organs  and  media  of  the  collective  mind 
as  one  finds  them  in  England  or  America  now,  how 
hazardous  they  are  and  accidental !  At  the  basis  of  this 
strange  thought-process  is  the  intelligence  of  the  common 
man,  once  illiterate  and  accessible  only  to  the  crude, 
inarticulate  influences  of  talk  and  rumour,  now  rapidly 
becoming  educated,  or  at  any  rate  educated  to  the 
level  of  a  reader  and  writer,  and  responding  more  and 
more  to  literary  influences.  The  great  mass  of  the  popu- 
lation is  indeed  at  the  present  time  like  clay,  which  has 
hitherto  been  a  mere  deadening  influence  underneath, 


268  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

but  which  this  educational  process,  like  some  drying  and 
heating  influence  upon  that  clay,  is  rendering  resonant, 
capable  of,  in  a  dim  answering  way,  ringing  to  the 
appeals  made  upon  it.  Reaching  through  this  mass, 
appealing  to  it  in  various  degrees  at  various  levels  and 
to  various  ends,  there  are  a  number  of  systems  of 
organizations  of  unknown  value  and  power.  Its  re- 
sponse, such  as  it  is,  robbed  by  multitudinousness  of  any 
personality  or  articulation,  is  a  broad  emotional  impulse. 
Above  this  fundamental  mass  is  the  growing  moiety 
which  has  a  conscious  thought-process,  of  a  sort.  Its 
fundamental  ideas,  its  preconceptions,  are  begotten  of  a 
mixture  of  social  traditions  learnt  at  home  and  in  school 
and  from  the  suggestions  of  contemporary  customs 
and  affairs.  But  it  reads  and  listens  more  or  less.  And, 
scattered  through  this,  here  and  there,  are  people 
really  learning,  really  increasing,  and  accumulating 
knowledge,  really  thinking  and  conversing  —  the  active 
mind-cells,  as  it  were,  of  the  world.  Their  ideas  are  con- 
veyed into  the  mass  much  as  impulses  are  conveyed 
into  an  imperfectly  innervated  tissue ;  they  are  conveyed 
by  books  and  pamphlets,  by  lecturing,  by  magazine 
articles  and  newspaper  articles,  by  the  agency  of  the  pul- 
pit, by  organized  propaganda,  by  political  display  and 
campaigns.  The  gross  effect  is  considerable,  but  it  is 
just  as  well  that  the  Socialist  should  look  a  little  closely 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SOCIALISM  269 

at  the  economic  processes  that  underlie  these  intellectual 
activities  at  the  present  time.  Except  for  the  universi- 
ties and  much  of  the  public  educational  organization, 
except  for  a  few  pulpits  endowed  for  good  under  condi- 
tions that  limit  freedom  of  thought  and  expression^  ex- 
cept for  certain  needy  and  impecunious  propagandas, 
the  whole  of  this  apparatus  of  public  thought  and  dis- 
cussion to-day  has  been  created  and  is  sustained  by 
commercial  necessity. 

For  example,  consider  what  is  I  suppose  by  far  the  most 
important  vehicle  of  ideas  at  the  present  time,  which  for 
a  huge  majority  of  adults  is  the  sole  vehicle  of  ideas,  the 
newspaper.  It  is  universal  because  it  is  cheap,  and  it  is 
cheap  because  the  cost  of  production  is  paid  for  by  the 
advertisements  of  private  enterprise.  The  newspaper 
is  to  a  very  large  extent  parasitic  upon  competition ;  its 
criticism,  its  discussion,  its  correspondence,  are,  from 
the  business  point  of  view,  written  on  the  backs  of  puffs 
of  competing  tobaccos,  soaps,  medicines,  and  the  like. 
No  newspaper  could  pay  upon  its  sales  alone,  and  the 
same  thing  is  true  of  most  popular  magazines  and 
weekly  publications.  It  is  highly  probable  that  what- 
ever checks  public  advertisement  in  other  directions, 
the  prohibition  of  bill-posting  upon  hoardings,  for 
example,  the  protection  of  scenery,  railway  carriages,  and 
architecture  from  the  advertiser,  stimulates  the    pro- 


270  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

duction  of  attractive  literature.  Necessarily  what  is 
published  in  newspapers  and  magazines  must  be  ac- 
ceptable to  advertising  businesses  and  not  too  openly 
contrary  to  their  interests.  With  that  limitation  the 
newspapers  provide  a  singularly  free  and  various  arena 
for  discussion  at  the  present  time.  It  must,  however,  be 
obvious  that  to  advance  toward  Socialism  is,  if  not  to  un- 
dermine the  newspaper  altogether,  at  least  to  change  very 
profoundly  this  material  vehicle  of  popular  thought.  .  .  . 
The  newspaper  disseminates  ideas.  So,  too,  does  the 
book  and  the  pamphlet,  and  so  far  as  these  latter  are 
concerned,  their  distribution  does  not  at  present  rest 
in  the  same  degree  upon  their  value  as  vehicles  of 
advertisement.  They  are  salable  things  unaided.  The 
average  book  of  to-day,  at  its  nominal  price  of  six  shil- 
lings, pays  in  itself  and  supports  its  producers.  So  in  a 
lesser  degree  does  the  sixpenny  pamphlet,  but  neither  book 
nor  pamphlet  reach  so  wide  a  public  as  the  halfpenny 
and  penny  press.  The  methods  and  media  of  the  book 
trade  have  grown  up,  no  man  designing  them;  they 
change,  and  no  one  is  able  to  foretell  the  effect  of  the 
changes.  At  present  there  is  a  great  movement  to 
cheapen  new  books,  and  it  would  seem  the  cheapening 
is  partly  to  be  made  up  for  in  enhanced  sales  and  partly 
by  an  increased  use  of  books  for  advertisement.  Many 
people  consider  this  cheapening  of  new  books  as  being 


CONSTRUCTIVE   SOCIALISM  271 

detrimental  to  the  interests  of  all  but  the  most  vulgarly 
popular  authors.  They  believe  it  will  increase  the  diffi- 
culty of  new  writers,  and  hopelessly  impoverish  just  the 
finest  element  in  our  literary  life, — those  original  and 
exceptional  minds  who  demand  educated  appreciation 
and  do  not  appeal  to  the  man  in  the  street.  This  may  or 
may  not  be  true;  the  aspect  of  interest  to  Socialists  is 
that  here  is  a  process  going  on  which  is  likely  to  produce 
the  most  far-reaching  results  upon  the  collective  mind, 
upon  that  thought-process  of  the  whole  community 
which  is  necessary  for  the  progressive  organization  of 
Society.  It  is  a  process  which  is  likely  to  spread  one 
type  of  writer  far  and  wide,  which  may  silence  or  de- 
moralize another,  which  may  vulgarize  and  debase  dis- 
cussion. Yet,  as  Socialists,  they  have  no  ideas  whatever 
in  this  matter,  their  project  of  activities  ignores  it 
altogether. 

Books  and  newspapers  constitute  two  among  the  chief 
mental  organs  of  a  modern  community,  but  almost  if  not 
equally  important  is  that  great  apparatus  for  the  dis- 
semination of  ideas  made  up  of  the  pulpits  and  lecture 
halls  of  a  thousand  sects  and  societies.  Toward  all 
these  things  Socialism  has  hitherto  maintained  an 
absurd  attitude  of  laissez-faire.  .  .  . 

So  far  I  have  looked  at  the  collective  mind  as  a  thought- 
process  only,  but  it  has  much  graver  and   more  im- 


272  NEW   WORLDS   FOR   OLD 

mediate  functions  in  a  democratic  state.  It  has,  one 
must  remember,  to  will  social  order  and  development. 
In  every  country  the  machinery  for  determining  and 
expressing  this  will  is  complex.  The  common  method 
in  the  modern  Western  state  is  through  the  voting  of  a 
numerous  electorate,  which  tends,  it  would  seem,  to  be- 
come more  and  more  the  entire  manhood,  if  not  the 
entire  adult  population  of  the  country.  It  is  a  curious 
but  perhaps  inevitable  method.  Practically  thought 
has  to  percolate  down  to  the  common  man  through  all 
these  strange  and  accidental  channels,  —  newspapers 
which  are  advertisement  sheets,  books  which  may  be 
boycotted  in  a  "Book  War,"  pulpits  pledged  to  doc- 
trine, and  lecture  halls  kept  open  by  rich  people's  sub- 
scriptions; it  has  to  reach  him,  to  mingle  itself  with 
generalized  emotional  forces  in  the  heat  of  mysteriously 
subsidized  election  campaigns,  and  then  return  as  a  col- 
lective determination.  For  the  Statesman  and  the  So- 
cialist there  could  hardly  be  any  study  more  important, 
one  might  think,  than  the  science  of  these  processes  and 
methods.  Yet  the  world  has  still  to  produce  even  the 
rudimentary  generalizations  of  this  needed  science  of 
collective  psychology. 

§3 
Now  I  ask  the  reader  to  consider  very  carefully  how 
the  Socialist  movement,  using  that  expression  now  in  its 


CONSTRUCTIVE   SOCIALISM  273 

wider  sense,  stands  to  this  very  vague  and  very  real 
outcome  of  social  evolution,  the  collective  mind;  what 
it  is  really  aspiring  to  do  in  that  collective  mind. 

One  has  to  recognize  that  this  mind  is  at  present  a 
mind  in  a  state  of  confusion,  full  of  warring  suggestions 
and  warring  impulses.  It  is  like  a  very  disturbed  human 
mind  :  it  is  without  a  clear  aim ;  it  does  not  know  except 
in  the  vaguest  terms  what  it  wants  to  do ;  it  has  impulses ; 
it  has  fancies ;  it  begins  and  forgets.  In  addition  it  is 
afflicted  with  a  division  within  itself  that  is  strictly  analo- 
gous to  that  strange  mental  disorder,  which  is  known  to 
psychologists  as  multiple  personality.  It  has  no  clear 
conception  of  the  whole  of  itself,  it  goes  about  forgetting 
its  proper  name  and  address.  Part  of  it  thinks  of  itself 
as  one  great  being,  as,  let  us  say,  Germany;  another 
thinks  of  itself  as  Catholicism,  another  as  the  White  Race, 
or  Judea.  At  times  one  might  deem  the  whole  confusion 
not  so  much  a  mind  as  incurable  dementia,  —  a  chaos  of 
mental  elements,  haunted  by  invincible  and  mutually  in- 
coherent fixed  ideas.  This,  you  will  remember,  is  the 
gist  of  that  melancholy  giant  torso  of  irony,  Flaubert's 
Bouvard  et  Pecuchet. 

In  its  essence  the  Socialist  movement  amounts  to  this : 
it  is  an  attempt  in  this  warring  chaos  of  a  collective  mind 
to  pull  itself  together,  to  develop  and  establish  a  gov- 
erning idea  of  itself.     It  is  like  a  man  saying  to  himself 


274  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

resolutely,  "What  am  I?  What  am  I  doing  with  my- 
self? Where  am  I  drifting?"  and  making  an  answer, 
hesitating  at  first,  crude  at  first,  and  presently  clear 
and  lucid. 

The  Socialist  movement  is  from  this  point  of  view,  no 
less  than  the  development  of  the  collective  self-conscious- 
ness of  humanity.  Necessarily  therefore  it  must  be 
international  as  well  as  outspoken,  making  no  truce  with 
prejudices  against  race  and  colour.  These  national  and 
racial  collective  consciousnesses  of  to-day  are  things  as 
vague,  as  fluctuating  as  mists  or  clouds;  they  melt, 
dissolve  into  one  another ;  they  coalesce ;  they  split.  No 
clear  isolated  national  mind  can  ever  maintain  itself  under 
modern  conditions;  even  the  mind  of  Japan  now  comes 
into  the  common  melting-pot  of  thought.  We  Socialists 
take  up  to-day  the  assertion  the  early  Christians  were 
the  first  to  make,  that  mankind  is  of  one  household  and 
one  substance ;  the  Samaritan  who  stoops  to  the  wounded 
stranger  by  the  wayside  our  brother  rather  than  that 
Levite.  .  .  . 

In  a  very  different  sense,  indeed,  the  Socialist  propa- 
ganda must  be  the  germ  of  the  collective  self-conscious- 
ness of  mankind  in  the  coming  time.  If  the  purpose  of 
Socialism  is  to  prevail,  its  scattered  writings,  its  dis- 
persed, indistinct,  and  confused  utterances,  must  in- 
crease in  height  and  breadth  and  range,  increase  in  power 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SOCIALISM  275 

and  service,  gather  to  themselves  every  means  of  ex- 
pression, grow  into  an  ordered  system  of  thought,  art, 
literature,  and  will.  The  Socialist  Propaganda  of  to-day 
must  beget  the  whole  Public  Opinion  of  to-morrow,  or 
fail.  The  Socialists  must  play  the  part  of  a  little 
leaven  to  leaven  the  whole  world.  If  they  do  not  leaven 
it,  then  they  are  altogether  defeated.  .  .  . 


§4 

Now  this  conception  of  Socialism,  as  being  ultimately 
an  intellectual  synthesis  of  mankind,  sets  a  fresh  test 
of  value  upon  all  the  activities  of  the  Socialist,  and  opens 
up  altogether  new  departments  for  research.  We  pro- 
pose to  destroy  the  competitive  capitalistic  system  that 
owns  and  sustains  our  present  newspapers,  gives  and 
leaves  money  to  universities,  endows  fresh  pulpits, 
publishes,  advertises,  and  buys  books;  we  have  to  ask, 
as  reasonable  creatures,  what  new  media  we  propose  to 
give  in  the  place  of  these  accidental  and  unsatisfactory 
methods  of  distributing  and  exchanging  thought.  It 
would  almost  seem  as  though  current  Socialism  breathes 
public  opinion  as  the  Middle  Ages  breathed  air,  without 
realizing  that  it  existed,  that  it  might  be  vitiated  or 
withheld.  And  so  we  are  beyond  the  range  of  prepared 
and  digested  Sociahst  proposals  here  altogether.      It  is 


276  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

still  open  to  the  anti-Socialist  to  allege  that  Socialism 
may  incidentally  destroy  itself  by  choking  the  channels 
of  its  own  thinking,  and  the  Socialist  has  still  to  reply 
in  vague  general  terms. 

We  must  insure  the  continuity  of  the  collective  mind. 
The  attempt  to  realize  the  Marxist  idea  of  a  demo- 
cratic Socialism  without  that  might  easily  fail  into  the 
abortive  birth  of  an  acephalous  monster;  the  secular 
development  of  administrative  Socialism  give  the  world 
over  to  a  bureaucratic  mandarinate,  self-satisfied,  in- 
terfering, and  unteachable,  with  whom  wisdom  would 
die.  Here  I  can  now  suggest  methods  only  in  the  most 
general  terms,  and  even  before  methods  are  suggested, 
certain  principles  need  to  be  laid  down  as  vitally  neces- 
sary to  Socialism.  They  are  essentially  principles  of 
that  Liberalism  out  of  whose  generous  aspirations  Social- 
ism sprang,  but  they  are  principles  that  even  to-day,  un- 
happily, do  not  figure  in  the  fundamental  creed  of  any 
Socialist  body. 

The  first  of  these  is  the  principle  of  freedom  of  speech; 
the  second,  freedom  of  writing;  and  the  third,  universality 
of  information.  In  the  civilized  state  every  one  must  be 
free  to  know,  knowledge  must  be  patent  and  at  hand,  and 
any  one  must  be  free  to  discuss,  write,  suggest,  and  per- 
suade. These  freedoms  must  be  guarded  as  sacred 
things.     It  is  not  in  the  untutored  nature  of  man  to 


CONSTRUCTIVE   SOCIALISM  277 

respect  any  of  these  freedoms;  it  is  not  in  the  bureau- 
cratic habit  of  mind.  Indeed,  the  desire  to  suppress 
opinions  adverse  to  our  own  is  almost  instinctive  in 
human  nature.  It  is  an  instinct  we  have  to  conquer. 
Fair  play  in  discussion  is  sustained  by  a  cultivated  re- 
spect, by  a  correction  of  natural  instinct;  men  need  to 
be  trained  to  be  jealous  of  obscurantism,  of  unfair  argu- 
ment, of  authoritative  interference  with  opinion  when 
that  opinion  is  against  them.  In  England  such  a 
jealousy  does  already  largely  exist;  it  has  been  culti- 
vated with  us  since  the  seventeenth  century  at  least. 
America,  it  seemed  to  me  during  my  short  visit  to  the 
States,  has  somewhat  retrograded  from  its  former  British 
standard  in  this  respect;  there  is  a  crude  majority  tyr- 
anny in  the  matter  of  publication,  an  un-English  dispo- 
sition to  boycott  libraries,  books,  authors,  and  pub- 
lications upon  petty  issues,  a  growing  disposition  to 
discriminate  in  the  mails  against  unpopular  views. 
These  interferences  with  open  statement  and  discussion 
are  decivilizing  forces. 

Given  a  clear  public  understanding  of  these  necessi- 
ties as  primary,  then  one  may  point  out  that  the  next 
necessity  for  the  mental  existence  of  a  Socialist  state  is 
an  extension  and  cheapening  of  the  impartial  universal 
distributing  activity  of  the  public  post  so  that  it  becomes 
not  only  the  means  of  correspondence,  but  also  of  dis- 


278  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

tributing  books  and  newspapers,  pamphlets,  and  every 
form  of  printed  matter.  The  post-ofRce  must  become 
bookseller  and  news-agent.  In  France  this  is  already 
the  case  with  the  press,  and  newspapers  are  handed  in, 
not  by  the  newsboy,  but  by  the  public  mail.  In  England, 
Messrs.  Smith  and  Mudie  and  so  forth  may  censor  what 
they  like  among  periodicals  or  books.  The  remedy  is 
more  toilsome  and  vexatious  than  the  injury.  Neither 
England  nor  America  has  any  security  against  finding  its 
public  supply  of  magazines  or  literature  suddenly  choked 
by  the  manoeuvres  of  some  black-mailing  book  or  news 
trust  "fighting"  author  or  publisher  for  some  squalid 
increase  in  its  proportion  of  profits,  or  interested  in 
jBnancial  exploitations  liable  to  exposure.  Neither 
country  is  secure  against  the  complete  control  of  its 
channels  of  thought  by  some  successful  monopolistic 
adventurer.  .  .  . 

The  Socialist  state  will  not  for  a  moment  permit  such 
risks  as  these;  it  must  certainly  be  the  universal  news- 
vender  and  bookseller;  every  news- vender  and  book- 
seller must  become  an  impartial  state  official,  working 
for  a  sure  and  comfortable  salary  instead  of  for  precarious 
profits.  And  this  amplification  of  the  book  and  news  post 
and  the  book  and  news  trades  will  need  to  be  not  simply 
a  municipal  but  a  state  service  of  the  widest  range. 

Distribution,  however,  is  only  the  beginning  of  the 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SOCIALISM  279 

problem.  There  is  the  more  difficult  issue  of  getting 
books  and  papers  printed  and  published.  And  here 
we  come  to  an  intricate  puzzle  in  reconciling  the  in- 
disputable need  for  untrammelled  individual  expression 
on  the  one  hand  with  public  ownership  on  the  other,  and 
also  with  the  difficult  riddle,  how  authors  may  be  sup- 
ported under  Socialist  conditions.  It  is  not  within  the 
design  of  this  book  to  do  more  than  indicate  a  possible 
solution.  At  present  authors  with  business  shrewdness 
and  the  ability  to  be  interesting  get  an  income  from 
the  sale  of  their  books,  and  it  seems  possible  that  they 
might  continue  to  be  paid  in  that  way  under  Socialism. 
It  is  difficult  outside  the  field  of  specialist  work  (which 
under  any  Socialist  system  has  to  be  endowed  in  relation 
to  colleges  and  universities)  to  find  any  other  just  way  of 
discriminating  between  the  author  who  ought  to  get  a 
living  from  writing,  and  the  author  who  has  no  reason- 
able claim  to  do  so.  But  under  Socialism,  in  addition 
to  the  private  publisher  or  altogether  replacing  him, 
there  will  have  to  be  some  sort  of  public  publisher. 

Here  again  difficulties  arise.  It  is  difficult  to  see  how, 
if  there  is  only  one  general  state  publishing  department, 
a  sort  of  censorship  can  be  altogether  avoided,  and  even 
if,  for  example,  one  insists  upon  the  right  of  every  one 
who  cares  to  pay  for  it  to  have  matter  printed,  bound, 
and  issued  by  the  public  presses  and  binders,  it  still 


280  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

leaves  a  disagreeable  possibility  of  uniformity  haunting 
the  mind.  But  the  whole  trend  of  administrative  So- 
cialism is  toward  a  conception  of  great  local  governments, 
of  land,  elementary  education,  omnibus-transit,  power- 
distribution,  and  the  like,  vesting  in  the  hands  of  muni- 
cipalities as  great  as  medioBval  principalities,  and  it 
seems  possible  to  look  to  these  great  bodies  and  to  the 
municipal  patriotism  and  intermunicipal  rivalries  that 
will  develop  about  them,  for  just  that  spirited  and 
competitive  publishing  that  is  desirable,  just  as  one  looks 
now  to  their  rivalries  as  a  stimulus  for  art  and  architec- 
ture and  public  dignity  and  display.*  Already,  as  I 
have  pointed  out  in  a  previous  chapter  (Chapter  VIII, 
§  5),  the  decorative  arts  had  to  be  rescued  from  the 
degrading  influence  of  private  enterprise;  no  one  wants 
to  go  back  now  to  the  early  Victorian  state  of  affairs,  and 
so  it  is  reasonable  to  hope  that  out  of  the  municipal  art 
and  technical  schools  which  teach  printing,  binding, 
and  the  like,  public  presses,  public  binderies,  and  all  the 
machinery  of  book  production  may  be  developed  in  a 
natural  and  convenient  manner.  So,  too,  the  munici- 
palities might  publish,  seek  out,  maintain,  and  honour 
writers  and  sell  the  books  they  produced,  against  each 

'  I  visited  Liverpool  and  Manchester  the  other  day  for  the 
first  time  in  my  hfe,  and  was  deUghted  to  find  how  the  inferiority 
of  the  local  art  galleries  to  those  of  Glasgow  rankled  in  people's 
minds. 


CONSTRUCTIVE   SOCIALISM  281 

other  all  over  the  world.  It  would  be  a  matter  of  pride 
for  authors  still  unrecognized  to  go  forth  to  the  world 
with  the  arms  of  some  great  city  on  their  covers,  and  it 
would  be  a  matter  of  pride  for  any  city  to  have  its  arms 
upon  work  become  classic  and  immortal.  So  at  least 
one  method  of  competition  is  possible  in  this  matter.  .  .  . 

This,  however,  is  but  one  passing  suggestion  out  of 
many  possibilities.  But  in  all  these  issues  of  the  intel- 
lectual life,  it  is  manifest  that  public  ownership  must  be 
so  contrived  and  can  be  so  contrived  as  to  avoid  centrali- 
zation and  a  control  without  alternatives.  Moreover, 
whatever  public  publishing  is  done,  it  must  be  left  open 
to  any  one  to  set  up  as  an  independent  publisher  or 
printer,  and  to  sell  and  advertise  through  the  impartial 
public  book  and  news- distributing  organization.  .   .  . 

I  lay  some  stress  upon  this  matter  of  book  issuing  be- 
cause it  is  a  remarkable  thing  about  contemporary 
Socialist  discussion  that  it  does  not  seem  to  be  in  the 
least  alive  to  the  great  public  disadvantage  of  leaving 
this  vitally  important  service  to  private  gain-getting. 
Municipal  coal,  municipal  milk,  municipal  house-owning, 
the  Socialists  seem  prepared  for,  and  even  municipal 
theatres,  but  municipal  publication  they  still  do  not 
take  into  consideration.  .  .  . 

The  problem  of  the  press  is  perhaps  to  be  solved  by 
some  parallel  combination  of  individual  enterprise  and 


282  NEW   WORLDS  FOR   OLD 

public  resources.  All  sorts  of  things  may  happen  to  the 
newspaper  of  to-day  even  in  the  near  future;  it  cannot 
but  be  felt  that  in  its  present  form  it  is  an  extremely 
transitory  phenomenon,  that  it  no  longer  embodies  and 
rules  public  thought  as  it  did  in  the  middle  and  later  Vic- 
torian period,  and  that  a  separation  of  public  discussion 
from  the  news-sheet  is  already  in  progress.  Both  in  Eng- 
land and  America  the  popular  magazine  seems  taking 
over  an  increasing  share  of  the  public  thinking.  .  .  . 

But  I  will  not  go  into  the  future  of  the  newspaper  here. 
All  these  suggestions  are  merely  thrown  out  in  the  most 
tentative  way  to  indicate  the  nature  of  the  field  for 
study  that  lies  open  for  any  intelligent  worker  to  cul- 
tivate. .  .  . 

The  same  truth  that  controls  must  be  divided,  and  a 
competition,  at  least  for  honour  and  repute,  kept  alive 
under  Socialism,  needs  also  to  be  applied  to  schools  and 
colleges  and  all  the  vast  machinery  of  research.  It  is 
imperative  that  there  should  be  overlapping  and  com- 
peting organizations.  An  educated  and  prosperous 
community,  such  as  we  hypotheticate  for  the  Socialist 
state,  will  necessarily  be  more  alert  for  interest  and  in- 
tellectual quality  than  our  present  "driven"  multi- 
tude; its  ampler  leisure,  its  wider  horizons,  will  keep  it 
critical  and  exacting  of  what  claims  its  attention.  The 
rivalries  of  institutions  and  municipalities  will  be  part 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SOCIALISM  283 

of  the  drama  of  life.  Under  Socialism,  with  the  exten- 
sion of  the  educational  process  it  contemplates,  univer- 
sities and  colleges  must  become  the  most  prominent  of 
facts;  nearly  every  one  will  have  that  feeling  for  some 
such  place  which  now  one  finds  in  a  Trinity  man  for 
Trinity;  the  sort  of  feeling  that  sent  the  last  thoughts 
of  Cecil  Rhodes  back  to  Oriel.  Everywhere  balanced 
against  the  town  hall  or  the  Parliament  house  will  be 
the  great  university  buildings  and  art  museums;  the 
lecture  halls  open  to  all  comers,  the  great  noiseless  libra- 
ries, the  book  exhibitions,  and  book  and  pamphlet 
stores,  keenly  criticised,  keenly  used,  will  teem  with  un- 
hurrying,  incessant,  creative  activities. 

And  all  this  immense  publicly  sustained  organization 
will  be  doing  greatly  and  finely  what  now  our  scattered 
line  of  Socialist  propagandists  is  doing  under  every  dis- 
advantage ;  that  is  to  say,  it  will  be  developing  and  sus- 
taining the  social  self-consciousness,  the  collective  sense 
of  the  state. 

§5 

I  am  naturally  preoccupied  with  the  Mind  of  that  Civil- 
ized State  we  seek  to  make  because  my  work  lies  in  this 
department.  But  while  the  writer,  the  publisher  and 
printer,  the  bookseller  and  librarian  and  teacher  and 
preacher,  must  chiefly  direct  himself  to  developing  this 


284  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

great  organized  mind  and  intention  in  the  world,  other 
sorts  of  men  will  be  concerned  with  parallel  aspects  of 
the  Socialist  synthesis.  The  medical  worker  and  the 
medical  investigator  will  be  building  up  the  body  of  a 
new  generation,  the  body  of  the  civilized  state,  and  he 
will  be  doing  all  he  can,  not  simply  as  an  individual,  but 
as  a  citizen,  to  organize  his  services  of  cure  and  preven- 
tion, of  hygiene  and  selection.  And  the  specialized 
man  of  science  will  be  concerned  with  his  own  special 
synthesis,  the  knowledge  of  the  civilized  state,  whether 
he  measure  crystals  or  stain  microtome  sections  or  count 
stars.  A  great  and  growing  multitude  of  men  will  be 
working  out  the  Apparatus  of  the  Civilized  State;  the 
student  of  transit  and  housing,  the  engineers  in  their 
incessantly  increasing  variety,  the  miners  and  geologists, 
estimating  the  world's  resources  in  metals  and  minerals, 
the  mechanical  inventors  perpetually  economizing  force. 
The  scientific  agriculturist  again  will  be  studying  the 
food-supply  of  the  world  as  a  whole,  and  how  it  may  be 
increased  and  distributed  and  economized.  And  to  the 
student  of  law  comes  the  task  of  rephrasing  his  intricate 
and  often  quite  beautiful  science  in  relation  to  the  new 
social  assumptions  we  have  laid  down.  All  these  and  a 
hundred  other  aspects  are  integral  to  the  wide  project 
of  constructive  Socialism  as  it  shapes  itself  now. 

And  to  the  man  or  woman  who  looks  at  these  issues. 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SOCIALISM  285 

not  as  one  specialized  in  relation  to  some  constructive 
calling,  but  as  a  common  citizen,  a  mere  human  being 
eager  to  make  and  do  from  the  standpoint  of  personal 
liberty  and  personal  affections,  the  appeal  of  this  great 
constructive  project  is  equally  strong.  You  want 
security  and  liberty.  Here  it  is,  safe  from  the  greed  of 
trust  and  landlord.  Here  is  investment  with  absolute  as- 
surance and  trading  with  absolute  justice;  this  is  the 
only  safe  way  to  build  your  own  house  in  perfect  security, 
to  make  your  own  garden  safe  for  yourself  and  for  your 
children's  children,  the  only  way  in  which  you  can  link 
a  hundred  million  kindred  wills  in  loyal  cooperation 
with  your  own,  and  that  is  to  do  it  not  for  yourself  alone 
and  for  your  children  alone,  but  for  all  the  world,  —  all 
the  world  doing  it  also  for  you,  —  to  join  yourself  to 
this  great  Making  of  a  permanent  well-being  for  man- 
kind. 

And  here  finally  let  me  set  out  a  sort  of  programme  of 
constructive  Socialism,  as  it  seems  to  be  shaping  itself 
in  the  minds  of  contemporary  Socialists,  in  order  that  the 
reader  may  be  able  to  measure  this  fuller  and  completer 
proposition  against  the  earlier  Fabian  Socialism  whose 
propositions  are  set  out  in  Chapter  XI,  §  1.  All  these 
are  incorporated  in  this  that  follows:  there  is  no  con- 
tradiction whatever  between  them,  but  there  is  ampli- 
fication ;   new  elements  are   taken  into   consideration, 


286  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

once  disregarded  difficulties  have  been  faced  and  par- 
tially resolved. 

First,  then,  the  constructive  Socialist  has  to  do 
whatever  lies  in  his  power  toward  the  enrichment  of  the 
Socialist  idea.  He  has  to  give  whatever  gifts  he  has 
as  artist,  as  writer,  as  maker  of  any  sort  to  increasing  and 
refining  the  conception  of  civilized  life.  He  has  to  em- 
body and  make  real  the  state  and  the  city.  And  the 
Socialist  idea,  constantly  restated,  refreshed,  and  elabo- 
rated, has  to  be  made  a  part  of  the  common  circle  of  ideas ; 
has  to  be  grasped  and  felt  and  assimilated  by  the  whole 
mass  of  mankind,  has  to  be  made  the  basis  of  each 
individual's  private  morahty.  That  mental  work  is 
the  primary,  most  essential  function  of  constructive 
Socialism. 

And  next,  constructive  Socialism  has  in  every  country 
to  direct  its  energies  and  attention  to  political  reform, 
to  the  scientific  reconstruction  of  our  representative  and 
administrative  machinery,  so  as  to  give  power  and  real 
expression  to  the  developing  collective  mind  of  the  com- 
munity and  to  remove  the  obstructions  to  Socialization 
that  are  inevitable  where  institutions  stand  for  "inter- 
ests" or  have  fallen  under  the  sway  of  aggressive  private 
property  or  of  narrowly  organized  classes.  Governing 
and  representative  bodies,  advisory  and  investigatory 
organizations  of  a  liberal  and  responsive  type,  have  to  be 


CONSTRUCTIVE   SOCIALISM  287 

built  up,  —  bodies  that  shall  be  really  capable  of  the  im- 
mense administrative  duties  the  secular  abolition  of  the 
great  bulk  of  private  ownership  will  devolve  upon  them. 

Thirdly,  the  constructive  Socialist  sets  himself  to 
forward  the  resumption  of  the  land  hy  the  community,  by 
increased  control,  by  taxation,  by  death  duties,  by  pur- 
chase, and  by  partially  compensated  confiscation  as 
circumstances  may  render  advisable,  and  so  to  make  the 
municipality  the  sole  landlord  in  the  reorganized  world. 

And  meanwhile  the  constructive  Socialist  goes  on  also 
with  the  work  of  socializing  the  main  public  services,  by 
transferring  them  steadily  from  private  enterprise  to 
municipal  and  state  control,  by  working  steadily  for 
such  transfers,  and  by  opposing  every  party  and  every 
organization  that  does  not  set  its  face  resolutely  against 
the  private  exploitation  of  new  needs  and  services. 

There  are  four  distinct  systems  of  public  service 
which  could  very  conveniently  be  organized  under  col- 
lective ownership  and  control  now,  and  each  can  be 
attacked  independently  of  the  others.  There  is  first  the 
need  of  public  educational  machinery,  and  by  educa- 
tion I  mean  not  simply  elementary  education,  but  the 
equally  vital  need  for  great  colleges,  not  only  to  teach 
and  study  technical  arts  and  useful  sciences,  but  also 
to  enlarge  learning  and  sustain  philosophical  and  lit- 
erary work.     A  civilized  community  is  impossible  with- 


288  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

out  great  public  libraries,  public  museums,  public  art 
schools,  without  public  honour  and  support  for  contem- 
porary thought  and  literature,  and  all  these  things  the 
constructive  Socialist  may  forward  at  a  hundred  points. 

Then  next  there  is  the  need  and  opportunity  of  organiz- 
ing the  whole  community  in  relation  to  health,  the  col- 
lective development  of  hospitals,  medical  aid,  public 
sanitation,  child  welfare,  into  one  great  loyal  and  effi- 
cient public  service.  This  too  may  be  pushed  forward 
either  as  the  part  of  the  general  Socialist  movement  or 
independently  as  a  thing  in  itself  by  those  who  may  find 
the  whole  Socialist  proposition  unacceptable  or  incon- 
venient. 

A  third  system  of  interests  upon  which  practical  work 
may  be  done  at  the  present  time  lies  in  the  complex 
interdependent  developments  of  transit  and  housing, 
questions  that  lock  up  inextricably  with  the  problem 
of  replanning  our  local  government  areas.  Here,  too, 
the  whole  world  is  beginning  to  realize  more  and  more 
clearly  that  private  enterprise  is  wasteful  and  socially 
disastrous,  that  collective  control,  collective  manage- 
ment, and  so  on  to  collective  enterprise  and  ownership 
of  building  land,  houses,  railways,  tramways,  and  omni- 
buses give  the  only  way  of  escape  from  an  endless  drift- 
ing entanglement  and  congestion  of  our  mobile  modern 
population. 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SOCIALISM  289 

The  fourth  department  of  economic  activity  in  which 
collectivism  is  developing,  and  in  which  the  constructive 
Socialist  will  find  enormous  scope  for  work,  is  in  connec- 
tion with  the  more  generalized  forms  of  public  trading, 
and  especially  with  the  production,  handling,  and  supply 
of  food  and  minerals.  When  the  lagging  enterprise  of 
agriculture  needs  to  be  supplemented  by  endowed  edu- 
cational machinery,  agriculturist  colleges,  and  the  like, 
when  the  feeble  intellectual  initiative  of  the  private 
adventure  miner  and  manufacturer  demands  a  London 
"Charlottenburg,"  it  must  be  manifest  that  state  initi- 
ative has  altogether  outdistanced  the  possibilities  of 
private  effort,  and  that  the  next  step  to  the  public 
authority  instructing  men  how  to  farm,  prepare  food, 
run  dairies,  manage  mines,  and  distribute  minerals,  is 
to  cut  out  the  pedagogic  middleman  and  undertake 
the  work  itself.  The  state  education  of  the  expert  for 
private  consumption  (such  as  we  see  at  the  Royal  School 
of  Mines)  is  surely  too  ridiculous  a  sacrifice  of  the  com- 
munity to  private  property  to  continue  at  that.  The 
further  inevitable  line  of  advance  is  the  transfer  from 
private  to  public  hands  by  purchase,  by  competing 
organizations,  or  what  not,  of  all  those  great  services, 
just  as  rapidly  as  the  increasing  capacity  and  experience 
of  the  public  authority  permits. 

This  briefly  is  the  work  and  method  of  constructive 


290  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

Socialism  to-day.  Under  one  or  other  head  it  can  utilize 
almost  every  sort  of  capacity  and  every  type  of  oppor- 
tunity. It  refuses  no  one  who  will  serve  it.  It  is  no 
narrow  doctrinaire  cult.  It  does  not  seek  the  best 
of  an  argument,  but  the  best  of  a  world.  Its  worst  ene- 
mies are  those  foolish  and  litigious  advocates  who 
antagonize  and  estrange  every  development  of  human 
Good  WiU  that  does  not  pay  tribute  to  their  vanity  in 
open  acquiescence.  Its  most  loyal  servants,  it  may  be 
its  most  effectual  helpers  on  the  side  of  art,  invention, 
and  public  organization  and  political  reconstruction, 
may  be  men  who  will  never  adopt  the  Socialist  name. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

SOME  ARGUMENTS  AD  HOMINEM 
§1 

Before  I  conclude  this  compact  exposition  of  modern 
Socialism,  it  is  reasonable  that  the  reader  should  ask 
for  some  little  help  in  figuring  to  himself  this  new  world 
at  which  we  Socialists  aim. 

"I  see  the  justice  of  much  of  the  Socialist  position,"  he 
will  say,  "and  the  soundness  of  many  of  your  generaliza- 
tions. But  it  still  seems  to  remain  —  generalizations ; 
and  I  feel  the  need  of  getting  it  into  my  mind  as  some- 
thing concrete  and  real.  "WTiat  will  the  world  be  like 
when  its  state  is  really  a  Socialist  one?  That's  my 
difficulty." 

The  full  answer  to  that  would  be  another  book.  I 
myself  have  tried  to  render  my  own  personal  dream  in  a 
book  called  A  Modern  Utopia,^  but  that  has  not  been  so 
widely  read  as  I  could  have  wished ;  it  does  not  appeal 
strongly  enough  perhaps  to  the  practical  everyday  side 
of  life,  and  here  I  may  do  my  best  to  give  very  briefly 
*  (Chapman  and  Hall,  3/6.) 
291 


292  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

some  intimation  of  a  few  of  the  differences  that  would 
strike  a  contemporary  if  he  or  she  could  be  transferred 
to  the  new  order  we  are  trying  to  evolve. 

It  would  be  a  world  and  a  life  in  no  fundamental  re- 
spect different  from  the  world  of  to-day,  made  up  of  the 
same  creatures  as  ourselves,  as  limited  in  capacity  if  not 
in  outlook,  as  hasty,  as  quick  to  take  offence,  as  ego- 
tistical essentially,  as  hungry  for  attention,  as  easily 
discouraged  —  they  would  indeed  be  better  educated 
and  better  trained,  less  goaded  and  less  exasperated, 
with  ampler  opportunities  for  their  finer  impulses  and 
smaller  scope  for  rage  and  secrecy,  but  they  would  still 
be  human.  At  bottom  it  would  still  be  a  struggle  for 
individual  ends,  albeit  ennobled  individual  ends;  for 
self-gratification  and  self-realization  against  external 
difhculty  and  internal  weakness.  Self-gratification 
would  be  sought  more  keenly  in  self-development  and 
self-realization  in  service,  but  that  is  a  change  of  tone 
and  not  of  nature.  You  might,  indeed,  were  you  sud- 
denly flung  into  it,  fail  to  note  altogether  for  a  long  time 
the  widest  of  the  differences  between  the  Socialist  state 
and  our  present  one,  the  absence  of  that  worrying  urgency 
to  earn,  that  sense  of  constant  economic  insecurity,  which 
afflicts  all  but  the  very  careless  or  the  very  prosperous 
to-day.  Painful  things  being  absent  are  forgotten.  On 
the  same  principle  certain  common  objects  of  our  daily 


SOME  ARGUMENTS  AD  HOMINEM  293 

life  you  might  not  miss  at  all.  There  would  be  no  slums, 
no  hundreds  of  miles  of  insanitary,  ignoble  homes,  no 
ugly,  health-destroying  cheap  factories.  If  you  were  not 
in  the  habit  of  walking  among  slums  and  factories,  you 
would  scarcely  notice  that.  Din  and  stress  would  be 
enormously  gone.  But  you  would  remark  simply  a 
change  in  the  atmosphere  about  you  and  in  your  own 
contentment  that  would  be  as  difficult  to  analyze  as  the 
calm  of  a  Sunday  morning  in  sunshine  in  a  pleasant 
country. 

Let  me  put  my  conception  of  the  Socialist  world  to  a 
number  of  typical  readers,  as  it  were,  so  that  they  may 
see  clearly  just  what  difference  in  circumstances  there 
would  be  for  them  if  we  Socialists  could  have  our  way 
now.  Let  me  suppose  them  as  far  as  possible  exactly 
what  they  are  now,  save  for  these  differences. 

Then  first  let  us  take  a  sample  case  and  suppose 
yourself  to  be  an  elementary  teacher.  So  far  as  your 
work  went  you  would  be  very  much  as  you  are  to-day; 
you  would  have  a  finer  and  more  beautiful  schoolroom, 
perhaps,  better  supplied  with  apparatus  and  diagrams; 
you  would  have  cleaner  and  healthier,  that  is  to  say, 
brighter  and  more  responsive  children,  and  you  would 
have  smaller  and  more  manageable  classes.  Schools  will 
be  very  important  things  in  the  Socialist  state,  and  you 
will  find  outside  your  classroom  a  much  ampler  building 


294  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

with  open  corridors,  a  library,  a  bath,  refectory  for  the 
children's  midday  meal,  and  gymnasium,  and  beyond 
the  playground,  a  garden.  You  will  be  an  enlisted 
member  of  a  public  service,  free  under  reasonable  con- 
ditions to  resign,  liable  under  extreme  circumstances  to 
dismissal  for  misconduct,  but  entitled  until  you  do  so  to 
a  minimum  salary,  a  maintenance  allowance,  that  is, 
and  to  employment.  You  will  have  had  a  general  edu- 
cation from  the  state  up  to  the  age  of  sixteen  or  seven- 
teen and  then  three  or  four  years  of  sound  technical 
training  so  that  you  will  know  your  work  from  top  to 
bottom.  You  will  have  applied  for  your  present  posi- 
tion in  the  service,  whatever  it  is,  and  have  been  ac- 
cepted, much  as  you  apply  and  are  accepted  for  posi- 
tions now,  by  the  school  managers,  and  you  will  have 
done  so  because  it  attracted  you,  and  they  will  have  ac- 
cepted you  because  your  qualifications  seemed  adequate 
to  them.  You  will  draw  a  salary  attached  to  the  posi- 
tion, over  and  above  that  minimum  maintenance  salary  to 
which  I  have  already  alluded.  You  will  be  working  just 
as  keenly  as  you  are  now  and  better  because  of  the  better 
training  you  have  had,  and  because  of  shorter  hours  and 
more  invigorating  conditions,  and  you  will  be  working 
for  much  the  same  ends,  that  is  to  say,  for  promotion 
to  a  larger  salary  and  wider  opportunities  and  for  the 
interest  and  sake  of  the  work.    In  your  leisure  you  may 


SOME   ARGUMENTS  AD  HOMINEM  295 

be  studying,  writing,  or  doing  some  work  of  supereroga- 
tion for  the  school  or  the  state  —  because  under  Socialist 
conditions  it  cannot  he  too  clearly  understood  that  all  the 
reasons  the  contemporary  Trade  Unionist  finds  against 
extra  work  and  unpaid  work  will  have  disappeared.  You 
will  not,  in  a  Socialist  state,  make  life  harder  for  others 
by  working  keenly  and  doing  much  if  you  are  so  dis- 
posed. You  will  be  free  to  give  yourself  generously  to 
your  work.  You  will  have  no  anxiety  about  sickness 
or  old  age;  the  State,  the  universal  Friendly  Society,  will 
hold  you  secure  against  that;  but  if  you  like  to  provide 
extra  luxury  and  dignity  for  your  declining  years,  if  you 
think  you  will  be  amused  to  collect  prints  or  books,  or 
travel  then,  or  run  a  rose  garden,  or  grow  chrysanthe- 
mums, the  State  will  be  quite  ready  for  you  to  pay  it  an 
insurance  premium  in  order  that  you  may  receive  in 
due  course  an  extra  annuity  to  serve  that  end  you  con- 
template. 

You  will  probably  live  as  a  tenant  in  a  house  which 
may  either  stand  alone  or  be  part  of  a  terrace  or  collegiate 
building,  but  instead  of  having  a  private  landlord,  exact- 
ing of  rent  and  reluctant  of  repairs,  your  house  landlord 
will  very  probably  be,  and  your  ground  landlord  will 
certainly  be,  the  municipality,  the  great  Birmingham  or 
London  or  Hampshire  or  Glasgow  or  such-like  municipal- 
ity, and  your  house  will  be  built  solidly  and  prettily, 


296  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

instead  of  being  jerry-built  and  mean-looking,  and  it  will 
have  bathroom,  electric  light,  electrically  equipped  kitch- 
en, and  so  forth,  as  every  modern  civilized  house  might 
have  and  should  have  now.  If  your  taste  runs  to  a  little 
close  garden  of  your  own,  you  will  probably  find  plenty 
of  houses  with  one ;  if  that  is  not  so  and  you  want  it 
badly,  you  will  get  other  people  of  like  tastes  to  petition 
the  municipality  to  provide  some,  and,  if  that  will  not  do, 
you  will  put  yourself  up  as  a  candidate  for  the  parish  or 
municipal  council  to  bring  this  about.  You  will  pay 
very  much  the  sort  of  rent  you  pay  now,  but  you  will  not 
pay  it  to  a  private  landlord  to  spend  as  he  likes,  at  Monte 
Carlo  or  upon  foreign  missions  or  in  financing  "Moder- 
ate" bill-posting,  or  what  not,  but  to  the  municipality, 
and  you  will  pay  no  rates  at  all.  The  rent  will  do  under 
Socialism  what  the  rates  do  now.  You  cannot  grasp 
too  clearly  that  Socialism  will  abolish  rates  absolutely. 
Rates  for  public  purposes  are  necessary  to-day  because 
the  landowners  of  the  world  evade  the  public  obliga- 
tions that  should,  in  common  sense,  go  with  the  rent. 

Light,  heating,  water,  and  so  on  will  either  be  covered 
by  the  rent  or  charged  for  separately,  and  they  will  be 
supplied  just  as  near  cost  price  as  possible.  I  don't 
think  you  will  buy  coals  because  I  think  that  in  a  few 
years'  time  it  will  be  possible  to  heat  every  house  ade- 
quately by  electricity ;   but  if  I  am  wrong  in  that,  then 


SOME  ARGUMENTS  AD  HOMINEM  297 

you  will  buy  your  coals  just  as  you  do  now,  except  that 
you  will  have  an  honest  coal  merchant,  the  Public  Coal 
Service,  —  a  merchant  not  greedy  for  profit  nor  short 
in  the  weight,  calculating  and  foreseeing  your  needs, — 
not  that  it  may  profit  by  them,  but  in  order  to  serve 
them,  —  storing  coal  against  a  demand  and  so  never 
raising  the  price  in  winter. 

I  am  assuming  you  are  going  to  be  a  house  occupier; 
but  if  you  are  a  single  man,  you  will  probably  live  in 
pleasant  apartments  in  an  hotel  or  college  and  dine  in  a 
club,  and  perhaps  keep  no  more  than  a  couple  of  rooms, 
one  for  sleep  and  one  for  study  and  privacy  of  your  own. 
But  if  you  are  a  married  man,  then  I  must  enlarge  a 
little  further  upon  your  domestic  details  because  you  will 
probably  want  a  "home  of  your  own."  .  .  . 

§2 

Now  just  how  a  married  couple  lives  in  the  Socialist 
state  will  depend  very  much,  as  indeed  it  does  now,  on 
the  individual  relations  and  individual  tastes  and  pro- 
chvities  of  the  two  people  most  concerned.  Many 
couples  are  childless  now  and  indisposed  for  home  and 
children,  and  such  people  will  also  be  found  in  the  Social- 
ist state,  and  in  their  case  the  wife  will  probably  have  an 
occupation  and  be  a  teacher,  a  medical  practitioner,  a 


298  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

government  clerk  or  official,  an  artist,  a  milliner,  and 
earn  her  own  living.  In  which  case  they  will  share 
apartments  perhaps,  and  dine  in  a  club  and  go  about 
together,  very  much  as  a  childless  couple  of  journalists 
or  artists  or  theatrical  people  do  in  London  to-day. 
But,  of  course,  if  either  of  them  chooses  to  idle  more  or 
less  and  live  on  the  earnings  of  the  other,  that  will  be  a 
matter  quite  between  themselves.  No  one  will  ask 
who  pays  their  rent  and  their  bills ;  that  will  be  for  their 
own  private  arrangement. 

But  if  they  are  not  childless  people  but  have  children, 
things  will  be  on  a  rather  different  footing.  Then  they 
will  probably  have  a  home  all  to  themselves,  and  that 
will  be  the  wife's  chief  affair ;  only  incidentally  will  she 
attend  to  any  other  occupation.  You  will  remember 
that  the  state  is  to  be  a  sort  of  universal  Friendly  Society, 
supplying  good  medical  advice  and  so  forth,  and  so  soon 
as  a  woman  is  likely  to  become  a  mother,  her  medical 
adviser,  man  or  woman  as  the  case  may  be,  will  report 
this  to  the  proper  officials  and  her  special  income  as  a 
prospective  mother  in  the  state  will  begin.  Then  when 
her  child  is  born,  there  will  begin  an  allowance  for  its 
support,  and  these  payments  will  continue  monthly  or 
quarterly,  and  will  be  larger  or  smaller  according  first  to 
the  well-being  of  the  child,  and  secondly,  to  the  need  the 
state  may  have  for  children  —  so  long  as  the  children  are 


SOME  ARGUMENTS  AD  HOMINEM  299 

in  their  motlier's  care.  All  this  money  for  maternity 
will  be  the  wife's  independent  income,  and  normally  she 
will  be  the  house-ruler,  just  as  she  is  now  in  most  well- 
contrived  households.  Her  personality  will  make  the 
home  atmosphere ;  that  is  the  woman's  gift  and  privilege, 
and  she  will  be  able  to  do  it  with  a  free  hand.  I  suppose 
that  for  the  husband's  cost  in  the  household  the  present 
custom  of  cultivated  people  of  independent  means  will 
continue,  and  he  will  pay  over  to  his  wife  his  share  of  the 
household  expenses. 

After  the  revenue  in  the  domestic  budget  under  Social- 
ism one  must  consider  the  expenditure.  I  have  already 
given  an  idea  how  the  rent  and  rates,  lighting  and  water, 
are  to  be  dealt  with  under  Socialist  conditions.  For  the 
rest,  the  housewife  will  be  dealing  on  very  similar  lines 
to  those  she  goes  upon  at  present.  She  will  buy  what 
she  wants  and  pay  cash  for  it.  The  milkman  will  come  in 
the  morning  and  leave  his  "  book  "  at  the  end  of  the  week, 
but  instead  of  coming  from  Mr.  Watertap  Jones'  or  the 
Twenty-per-cent  Dairy  Company,  he  will  come  from  the 
Municipal  Dairy ;  he  will  have  no  interest  in  giving  short 
measure,  and  all  the  science  in  the  state  will  be  behind  him 
in  keeping  the  milk  clean  and  pure.  If  he  is  unpunctual 
or  trying  in  any  way,  the  lady  will  complain  just  as  she 
does  now,  but  to  his  official  superiors  instead  of  his  em- 
ployer, and  if  that  does  not  do,  she  and  her  aggrieved 


300  NEW   WORLDS   FOR   OLD 

neighbours  (all  voters  you  will  understand)  will  put  the 
thing  to  their  representative  in  the  parish  or  municipal 
council.  Then  she  will  buy  her  meat  and  groceries  and 
so  on,  not  in  one  of  a  number  of  inefficient  little  shops  with 
badly  assorted  goods  under  unknown  brands,  as  she  does 
now  if  she  lives  in  a  minor  neighbourhood,  but  in  a 
branch  of  a  big  well-organized  business  like  Lipton's 
or  Whiteley's  or  Harrod's.  She  may  have  to  go  to  it  on 
a  municipal  electric  car,  for  which  she  will  probably  pay 
a  fare  just  as  she  does  now,  unless  perhaps  her  house  rent 
includes  a  season  ticket.  The  store  will  not  belong  to 
Mr.  Lipton  or  Mr.  Whiteley,  or  Mr.  Harrod,  but  to  the 
public  —  that  will  be  the  chief  difference ;  and  if  she 
does  not  like  her  service,  she  will  be  able  to  criticise  and 
remedy  it,  just  as  one  can  now  criticise  and  remedy  any 
inefficiency  in  one's  local  post-office.  If  she  does  not 
like  the  brands  of  goods  supplied,  she  will  be  able  to 
insist  upon  others.  There  will  be  brands,  too,  differ- 
ent from  the  household  names  of  to-day  in  the  goods 
she  will  buy.  The  county  arms  of  Devon  will  be  on  the 
butter  paper,  Hereford  and  Kent  will  guarantee  her 
cider,  Hampshire  and  Wiltshire  answer  for  her  bacon, 
just  as  now  already  Australia  brands  her  wines  and  New 
Zealand  protects  her  from  deception  (and  insures  clean, 
decent  slaughtering)  in  the  matter  of  Canterbury 
lamb.     I  rather  like  to  think  of  the  red  dagger  of  London 


SOME   ARGUMENTS   AD  HOMINEM  301 

on  the  wholesome  bottled  ales  of  her  great  (municipalized) 
breweries,  and  Maidstone  or  Rochester,  let  us  say,  boast- 
ing a  special  reputation  for  jam  or  pickles.  Good 
honest  food,  all  of  it  will  be,  made  by  honest,  unsweated 
women  and  men,  with  the  pride  of  broad  vales  and  up- 
lands, counties,  principalities,  and  great  cities  behind  it. 
Each  county  and  municipality,  will  be  competing  freely 
against  its  fellows,  not  in  price  but  quality :  the  cheeses 
of  Cheshire  against  the  cheeses  of  France  and  Switzer- 
land, the  beer  of  Munich  against  the  Kentish  brew, 
bread  from  the  bakeries  of  London  and  Paris,  biscuits 
from  Reading  town,  chocolate  from  Switzerland  and 
Bourneville,  side  by  side  with  butter  from  the  meadows 
of  Denmark  and  Russia. 

Then  when  the  provisions  have  been  bought,  she  will 
go  perhaps  to  the  other  departments  of  the  great  store 
and  buy  or  order  the  fine  linen  and  cotton  of  the  Man- 
chester men,  the  delicate  woollens  of  the  Bradford  city 
looms,  the  silks  of  London  or  Mercia,  Northampton 
or  American  boots  and  so  forth,  just  as  she  does  now  in 
any  of  the  great  stores.  But,  as  I  say,  all  these  goods 
will  be  honest  goods,  made  to  wear  as  well  as  look  well, 
and  the  shopman  will  have  no  ''premiums"  to  tempt 
him  to  force  rubbish  upon  her  instead  of  worthy  makes 
by  specious  "introduction." 

But  suppose  she  wants  a  hat  or  a  dress  made.    Then 


302  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

probably,  for  all  that  the  world  is  under  Socialism,  she 
will  have  to  go  to  private  enterprise ;  a  matter  of  taste 
and  individuality,  such  as  dress,  cannot  be  managed  in  a 
wholesale  way.  She  will  probably  find  in  the  same 
building  as  the  big  department  store,  a  number  of  little 
establishments,  of  Madame  This,  of  Mrs.  That,  some 
perhaps  with  windows  displaying  a  costume  or  so,  or  a 
hat  or  so,  and  here  she  will  choose  her  particular  artist 
and  contrive  the  thing  with  her.  I  am  inclined  to  think 
the  dressmaker  or  milliner  will  charge  a  fee  according 
to  her  skill  and  reputation  for  designing  and  cutting 
and  so  on,  and  that  the  customer  will  pay  the  store 
separately  for  material  and  the  municipal  workshop  for 
the  making  under  the  artist's  direction.  I  don't  think, 
that  is,  that  the  milliner  or  dressmaker  will  make  a  trad- 
ing profit,  but  only  an  artist's  fee. 

And  if  the  lady  wants  to  buy  books,  music,  artistic 
brac-a-brac,  or  what  not,  she  will  find  the  big  store, 
displaying  and  selling  all  these  things  on  commission 
for  the  municipal  or  private  producers  all  over  the 
world.  .  .  . 

So  much  for  the  financial  and  economic  position  of  an 
ordinary  woman  in  a  Socialist  state.  But  management 
and  economies  are  but  the  basal  substance  of  a  woman's 
life.  She  will  be  free  not  merely  financially;  the 
systematic  development  of  the  social  organization  and 


SOME   ARGUMENTS   AD  HOMINEM  303 

of  the  mechanism  of  life  will  be  constantly  releasing  her 
more  and  more  from  the  irksome  duties  and  drudgeries 
that  have  consumed  so  much  of  the  energies  of  her  sex 
in  the  past.  She  will  be  a  citizen  and  free  as  a  man  to 
read  for  herself,  think  for  herself,  and  seek  expression. 
Under  the  law,  in  politics  and  all  the  affairs  of  life  she 
will  be  the  equal  of  a  man.  No  one  will  control  her 
movements  or  Hmit  her  actions  or  stand  over  her  to  make 
decisions  for  her.  All  these  things  are  implicit  in  the 
fundamental  generalization  of  Socialism  which  denies 
property  in  human  beings. 

§3 

Perhaps  now  the  reader  will  be  able  to  figure  a  little 
better  the  common  texture  of  the  life  of  a  teacher  or  a 
housewife  under  Socialism.  And  incidentally  I  have 
glanced  at  the  position  a  clever  milliner  or  dressmaker 
would  probably  have  under  the  altered  conditions.  The 
great  mass  of  the  employees  in  the  distributing  trade 
would  obviously  be  hving  a  sort  of  clarified,  dignified 
version  of  their  present  existence,  freed  from  their  worst 
anxieties,  the  terror  of  the  ''swap,"  the  hopeless  ap- 
proach of  old  age,  and  from  the  sweated  food  and  ac- 
commodation of  the  living-in  system.  Under  Socialism 
the  '4iving-in"  system  would  be  incredible.  Their 
conditions  of  life  would  approximate  to  those  of  the 


304  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

teacher.  Like  him  they  would  be  enrolled  a  part  of  a 
great  public  service,  and  like  him  entitled  to  a  minimum 
wage,  and  over  and  above  that  they  would  draw  salaries 
commensurate  with  the  positions  their  energy  and 
ability  had  won.  The  prosperous  merchant  of  to-day 
would  find  himself  somewhere  high  in  the  hierarchy 
of  the  distributing  service.  If,  for  example,  you  are  a 
tea  merchant  or  a  provision-broker,  then  probably  if 
you  like  that  calling,  you  would  be  handling  the  same 
kind  of  goods,  not  for  profit  but  efficiency,  "shipping  into 
the  Midlands"  from  Liverpool,  let  us  say,  much  as  you 
do  now.  You  would  be  keener  on  quality  and  less  keen 
on  deals;  that  is  all.  You  would  not  be  trying  to 
"skin"  a  business  rival,  but  very  probably  you  would  be 
just  as  keen  to  beat  the  London  distributors  and  dis- 
tinguish yourself  in  that  way.  And  you  would  get  a 
pretty  good  salary;  modern  Socialism  does  not  propose 
to  maintain  any  dead  level  to  the  detriment  of  able  men. 
Modern  Socialism  has  cleared  itself  of  that  jealous  hatred 
of  prosperity  that  was  once  a  part  of  class-war  Socialism. 
You  would  be,  you  see,  far  more  than  you  are  now,  one 
of  the  pillars  of  your  town's  prosperity  —  and  the  Town 
Hall  would  be  a  place  worth  sitting  in.  .  .  . 

So  far  as  the  rank  and  file  of  the  distributing  service  is 
concerned,  the  chief  differences  would  be  a  better  edu- 
cation, security  for  a  minimum  living,  an  assured  old 


SOME   ARGUMENTS  AD  HOMINEM  305 

age,  shorter  hours,  more  private  freedom,  and  more 
opportunity.  Since  the  whole  business  would  be  public 
and  the  customer  would  be  one's  indirect  master  through 
the  polling  booth,  promotion  would  be  far  more  by- 
merit  than  it  is  now  in  private  businesses,  where  irrelevant 
personal  considerations  are  often  overpowering,  and  it 
would  be  open  to  any  one  to  apply  for  a  transfer  to  some 
fresh  position  if  he  or  she  found  insufficient  scope  in  the 
old  one.  The  staff  of  the  stores  will  certainly  "live  out," 
and  their  homes  and  way  of  living  will  be  closely  parallel 
to  that  of  the  two  people  I  have  sketched  in  §  §  1  and  2. 
In  the  various  municipal  and  state  transit  services  the 
state  of  affairs  would  be  even  closer  to  a  broadened  and 
liberalized  version  of  things  as  they  are.  The  con- 
ductors and  drivers  will  no  doubt  wear  uniforms,  for 
convenience  of  recognition  ;  but  a  uniform  will  carry  with 
it  no  association  with  the  idea  of  a  livery  as  it  does  at  the 
present  time.  Mostly  this  service  will  be  run  by  young 
men,  and  each  one,  like  the  private  of  the  democratic 
French  army,  will  feel  that  he  has  a  marshal's  haton  in 
his  knapsack.  He  will  have  had  a  good  education;  he 
will  have  short  hours  of  duty  and  leisure  for  self-im- 
provement or  other  pursuits,  and  if  he  remains  a  con- 
ductor or  driver  all  his  life,  he  will  have  only  his  own  un- 
pretending qualities  to  thank  for  that.  He  will  probably 
remain  a  conductor  if  he  hkes  to  remain  a  conductor,  and 


306  NEW    WORLDS   FOR   OLD 

get  out  if  he  does  not.     He  is  not  obliged  to  take  that 
baton  out  and  bother  with  it  if  he  has  quiet  tastes. 

The  great  organized  industries,  mining,  cotton,  iron, 
building,  and  the  like,  would  differ  chiefly  in  the  perma- 
nence of  employment  and  the  systematic  evasion  of  the 
social  hardship  caused  nowadays  by  new  inventions  and 
economies  in  method.  There  will  exist  throughout  the 
world  an  organized  economic  survey,  which  will  con- 
tinually prepare  and  revise  estimates  of  the  need  of  iron, 
coal,  cloth,  and  so  forth  in  the  coming  months;  the  blind 
speculative  production  of  our  own  times  is  due  merely 
to  the  dark  ignorance  in  which  we  work  in  these  matters, 
and  with  such  a  survey,  employment  will  lose  much  of 
the  cruel  intermittence  it  now  displays.  The  men  in 
these  great  productive  services,  quite  equally  with  teach- 
ers and  railway  men,  will  be  permanently  employed. 
They  will  be  no  more  taken  on  and  turned  off  by  the  day 
or  week  than  we  should  take  on  or  turn  off  an  extra 
policeman  or  depend  for  our  defences  upon  soldiers  casu- 
ally engaged  upon  the  battlefield  at  sixpence  an  hour. 
And  if  by  adopting  some  ingenious  device  we  dispense 
suddenly  with  the  labour  of  hundreds  of  men,  the  Social- 
ist state  will  send  them,  not  into  the  casual  wards  and 
colonies  as  our  state  does,  to  become  a  social  burthen 
there,  but  into  the  technical  schools  to  train  for  some  fresh 
use  of  their  energies.    Taken  all  round,  of  course,  these 


SOME  ARGUMENTS   AD  HOMINEM  307 

men,  even  the  least  enterprising  or  able,  will  be  better 
off  than  they  are  now,  with  a  fuller  share  of  the  product 
of  their  industry.  Many  will  no  doubt  remain  as  they 
are,  rather  through  want  of  ambition  than  want  of  push, 
because  under  Socialism  life  will  be  tolerable  for  a  poor 
man.  A  man  who  chooses  to  do  commonplace  work 
and  spend  his  leisure  upon  chess  or  billiards,  or  gossip, 
or  eccentric  studies,  or  amusing  but  ineffectual  art,  will 
remain  a  poor  man,  indeed,  but  not  be  made  a  wretched 
one.  Sheer  toil  of  a  mechanical  sort  there  is  little  need  of 
in  the  world  now ;  it  could  be  speedily  dispensed  with  at  a 
thousand  points  were  human  patience  not  cheaper  than 
good  machinery,  but  there  will  still  remain  ten  thousand 
undistinguished  sorts  of  work  for  unambitious  men.  .  .  . 
If  you  are  a  farmer  or  any  sort  of  horticulturist,  a 
fruit  or  flower  grower,  let  us  say,  or  a  seedsman,  you  will 
probably  find  yourself  still  farming  under  Socialism ;  that 
is  to  say,  renting  land  and  getting  what  you  can  out  of  it. 
Your  rent  will  be  fixed,  just  as  it  is  to-day,  by  what 
people  will  give.  But  your  landlord  will  be  the  muni- 
cipality or  the  county,  and  the  rent  you  pay  will  largely 
come  back  to  you  in  repairs,  in  the  guiding  reports  and 
advice  of  the  Agricultural  Department,  in  improved  roads, 
in  subventions  to  a  good  electric  car  service  to  take  your 
produce  to  market,  in  aids  and  education  for  your  children. 
You  will  probably  have  a  greater  fixity  of  tenure  and  a 


308  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

clearer  ownership  in  improvements  than  you  have  to-day. 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  your  dairying  and  milling  and 
so  forth  will  be  done  wholesale  in  big  public  dairies  and 
mills  because  of  the  economy  of  that;  you  will  send  up 
the  crude  produce  and  sell  it  perhaps  to  the  county  asso- 
ciation to  brand  and  distribute.  It  is  probable  you  will 
sell  your  crops  standing  and  the  public  authority  will 
organize  the  harvesting  and  bring  out  an  army  of 
workers  from  the  towns  to  gather  your  fruit,  hops,  and 
corn.  You  will  need  therefore  only  a  small  permanent 
staff  of  labourers,  and  these  are  much  more  likely  to  be 
partners  with  you  in  the  enterprise  than  wage-workers 
needing  to  be  watched  and  driven. 

In  your  leisure  you  will  shoot,  perhaps,  or  hunt  if  your 
tastes  incline  that  way;  it  is  quite  likely  that  scat- 
tered among  the  farms  of  the  future  countryside  will  be 
the  cottages  and  homes  of  all  sorts  of  people  with  open- 
air  tastes  who  will  share  their  sports  with  you.  One 
need  not  dread  the  disappearance  of  sport  with  the  disap- 
pearance of  the  great  house.  In  the  dead  winter  time 
you  will  probably  like  to  run  into  the  nearest  big  town 
with  your  wife  and  family,  stay  in  a  hotel  for  a  few 
weeks,  talk  to  people  in  your  clubs,  see  what  plays 
there  are  in  the  municipal  theatres,  and  so  forth.  And 
you  will  no  doubt  travel  also  in  your  holidays.  All  the 
world  will  know  something  of  the  pleasures  and  freedom 


SOME  ARGUMENTS  AD  HOMINEM  309 

of  travel,  of  wandering  and  the  enjoyment  of  unfamiliar 
atmospheres,  of  mountains  and  deserts  and  remote 
cities  and  deep  forests  and  the  customs  of  alien  peoples. 


§4 

A  medical  man  or  woman  or  a  dentist  or  any  such 
skilled  professional,  like  the  secondary  schoolmaster,  will 
cease  to  be  a  private  adventurer  under  Socialism,  con- 
cerned chiefly  with  the  taking  of  a  showy  house  and  the 
use  of  a  showy  conveyance ;  he  (or  she)  will  become  part 
of  one  of  the  greatest  of  all  the  public  services  in  the  com- 
ing time,  —  the  service  of  public  health.  Either  he  —  I 
use  this  pronoun  and  imply  its  feminine  —  will  be  on  the 
staff  of  some  of  the  main  hospitals  (which  will  not  be 
charities  but  amply  endowed  public  institutions)  or  he 
will  be  a  part  of  a  district  staff,  working  in  conjunction 
with  a  nursing  organization,  a  cottage  hospital,  an 
isolation  hospital  and  so  forth,  or  he  will  be  an  advising 
specialist  or  mainly  engaged  in  research  or  teaching  and 
training  a  new  generation  in  the  profession. 

He  must  not  judge  his  life  and  position  quite  by  the 
lives  and  position  of  publicly  endowed  investigators  and 
medical  officers  of  health  to-day.  At  present,  because 
of  the  jealousy  of  the  private  owner  who  has,  as  he  says, 
to  "find  the  funds,"  almost  all  public  employment  is 


310  NEW  WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

badly  paid  relatively  to  privately  earned  incomes.  The 
same  thing  is  true  of  all  scientific  investigators  and  of 
most  public  officials.  The  state  of  things  to  which  So- 
cialism points  is  a  world  that  will  necessarily  be  har- 
monious with  these  constructive  conceptions  and  free 
from  those  jealousies.  Whitehall  and  South  Kensing- 
ton have  much  to  fear  from  the  wanton  columns  of  a 
vulgarized  capitalistic  press  and  from  the  greedy  intrigues 
of  syndicated  capital,  but  nothing  from  a  sane  construc- 
tive Socialism.  To  the  public  official  therefore  of  the 
present  time  the  Socialist  has  merely  to  say  that  he  will 
probably  be  better  paid,  relatively,  than  he  is  now,  and 
in  the  matter  of  his  house  rents  and  domestic  marketing, 
vide  supra.  .  .  . 

But  now  suppose  you  are  an  artist  —  and  I  use  the 
word  to  cover  all  sorts  of  art,  literary,  dramatic,  and 
musical,  as  well  as  painting,  sculpture,  design,  and  ar- 
chitecture —  you  want  before  all  things  freedom  for 
personal  expression,  and  you  probably  have  an  idea  that 
this  is  the  last  thing  you  will  get  in  the  Socialist  state. 
But,  indeed,  you  will  get  far  more  than  you  do  now. 
You  will  begin  as  a  student,  no  doubt,  in  your  local 
municipal  art  schools,  and  there  you  will  win  prizes  and 
scholarships  and  get  some  glorious  years  of  youth  and 
work  in  Italy  or  Paris  or  Germany  or  London  or  Boston 
or  New  York  or  wherever  the  great  teachers  and  workers 


SOME  ARGUMENTS  AD  HOMINEM  311 

of  your  art  gather  thickest,  and  then  you  will  compete, 
perhaps,  for  some  public  work,  and  have  something 
printed  or  published  or  reproduced  and  sold  for  you  by 
your  school  or  city;  or  get  a  loan  from  your  home 
municipality  for  material  —  if  your  material  costs 
money  —  and  set  to  work  making  that  into  some  sal- 
able, beautiful  thing.  If  you  are  at  all  distinguished  in 
quality,  you  will  have  a  competition  among  public 
authorities  from  the  beginning,  to  act  as  sponsors  and 
dealers  for  your  work ;  benevolent  dealers  they  will  be 
and  content  with  a  commission.  And  if  you  make  things 
that  make  many  people  interested  and  happy,  you  may 
by  that  fortunate  gift  of  yours,  grow  to  be  as  rich  and 
magnificent  a  person  as  any  one  in  the  Socialist  state. 
But  if  you  do  not  please  people  at  all,  either  the  con- 
noisseurs of  the  municipal  art  collection  or  private  as- 
sociations of  art  patrons  or  the  popular  buyer,  well,  then 
your  lot  will  be  no  harder  than  the  lot  of  any  unsuccess- 
ful artist  now ;  you  will  have  to  do  something  else  for 
a  time  and  win  leisure  to  try  again. 

Theatrical  productions  will  be  run  on  a  sort  of  im- 
provement upon  contemporary  methods,  but  there  will 
be  no  cornering  of  talent  possible,  no  wild  advertisement 
of  favoured  stars  upon  strictly  commercial  lines,  no 
theatrical  trust.  The  theatres  will  be  municipal  build- 
ings, every  theatre-going  voter  will  be  keen  to  see  them 


312  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

comfortable  and  fine;  they  will  perhaps  be  run  in  some 
cases  by  a  public  repertoire  company  and  in  another  by 
a  lessee,  and  this  latter  may  be  financed  by  his  own 
private  savings  or  by  subscribers  or  partners,  or  even 
by  a  loan  from  the  public  bank,  as  the  case  may  be.  This 
latter  method  of  exploitation  by  a  lessee  will  probably 
also  work  best  in  the  public  Music- Halls,  but  it  is  quite 
equally  possible  that  these  may  be  controlled  by  mana- 
gers under  partly  elected  and  partly  appointed  public 
committees.  In  some  cases  the  theatrical  lessee  might 
be  a  kind  of  stage  society  organized  for  the  production 
of  particular  types  of  play.  The  spectators  will  pay  for 
admission,  of  course,  as  they  do  now,  but  to  the  Municipal 
Box-Offices,  and,  I  suppose,  the  lessee  or  the  author  and 
artists  will  divide  up  the  surplus  after  the  rent  of  the 
theatre  has  been  deducted  for  the  Municipal  Treasury. 
In  every  town  of  any  importance  there  will  be  many 
theatres,  music-halls,  and  the  like,  perhaps  under  com- 
peting committees.  In  all  these  matters,  as  every  in- 
telligent person  understands,  one  has  to  maintain  variety 
of  method,  a  choice  of  avenues,  freedom  from  autocracies, 
and  since  the  Socialist  community  will  contain  a  great 
number  of  intelligent  persons  with  leisure  and  oppor- 
tunity for  artistic  appreciation,  there  is  little  chance  of 
this  important  principle  being  forgotten,  much  less 
than  there  is  in  this  world  where  a  group  of  dealers  can 


SOME  ARGUMENTS  AD  HOMINEM  313 

often  make  an  absolute  corner  in  this  artistic  market  or 
that.  You  will  not,  under  Socialism,  see  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt playing  in  a  tent  as  she  had  to  do  in  America,  be- 
cause all  the  theatres  have  been  closed  against  her 
through  some  mean  dispute  with  a  trust  about  the 
sharing  of  profits. 

And  if  it  is  not  too  sudden  a  transition,  it  seems  most 
convenient  in  a  Socialist  state  to  leave  religious  wor- 
ship entirely  to  the  care  of  private  people;  to  let  them 
subscribe  among  themselves,  subject,  of  course,  to  a 
reasonable  statute  of  Mortmain,  to  lease  land  and  build 
and  endow  and  maintain  churches  and  chapels,  altars  and 
holy  places  and  meeting-houses,  priests  and  devout 
ceremonies.  This  will  be  the  more  easily  done  since  the 
heavy  social  burthens  that  oppress  religious  bodies  at  the 
present  time  will  be  altogether  lifted  from  them;  they 
will  have  no  poor  to  support,  no  schools,  no  hospitals, 
no  nursing  sisters,  the  advance  of  civilization  will  have 
taken  over  these  duties  of  education  and  humanity  that 
Christianity  first  taught  us  to  realize.  So,  too,  there 
seems  no  objection  and  no  obstacle  in  Socialism  to  re- 
ligious houses,  to  nunneries,  monasteries,  and  the  like, 
so  far  as  these  institutions  are  compatible  with  personal 
freedom  and  the  public  health,  but  of  course  factory  laws 
and  building  laws  will  run  through  all  these  places,  and 
the  common  laws  and  limitations  of  contract  override 


314  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

their  vows,  if  their  devotees  repent.  So  that  you  see 
Socialism  will  touch  nothing  hving  of  religion,  and  if 
you  are  a  religious  minister,  you  will  be  very  much  as 
you  are  at  the  present  time,  but  with  lightened  parochial 
duties.  If  you  are  an  earnest  woman  and  want  to  nurse 
the  sick  and  comfort  the  afflicted,  you  will  need  only, 
in  addition  to  your  religious  profession,  to  qualify  as  a 
nurse  or  medical  practitioner.  There  will  still  be  ample 
need  of  you.  Socialism  will  not  make  an  end  of  human 
trouble,  either  of  the  body  or  of  the  soul,  albeit  it  will 
put  these  things  into  such  comfort  and  safety  as  it  may. 

§5 

And  now  let  me  address  a  section  to  those  particular 
social  types  whose  method  of  living  seems  most  threat- 
ened by  the  development  of  an  organized  civilization, 
who  find  it  impossible  to  imagine  lives  at  all  Hke  their 
own  in  the  Socialist  state. 

But  first  it  may  be  well  to  remind  them  again  of  some- 
thing I  have  already  done  my  best  to  make  clear,  that 
the  modern  Socialist  contemplates  no  swift  change  of 
conditions  from  those  under  which  we  live,  to  Socialism. 
There  will  be  no  wonderful  Monday  morning  when  the 
old  order  will  give  place  to  the  new.  Year  by  year  the 
great  change  has  to  be  brought  about,  now  by  this 


SOME   OBJECTIONS  AD  HOMINEM  315 

socialization  of  a  service,  now  by  an  alteration  in  the 
incidence  of  taxation,  now  by  a  new  device  of  public 
trading,  now  by  an  extension  of  education.  This 
problem  at  the  utmost  is  a  problem  of  adaptation,  and 
for  most  of  those  who  would  have  no  standing  under  the 
revised  conceptions  of  social  intercourse,  it  is  no  more 
than  to  ask  whether  it  is  wise  they  should  prepare  their 
sons  or  daughters  to  follow  in  their  footsteps  or  consent 
to  regard  their  callings  as  a  terminating  function. 

So  far  as  many  professions  and  callings  go,  this  matter 
may  be  dismissed  in  a  few  words.  Under  Socialism, 
while  the  particular  trade  or  profession  might  not  exist, 
there  would  probably  be  ample  scope  in  the  public  ma- 
chine for  the  socially  more  profitable  employment  of  the 
same  energies.  A  family  solicitor,  such  as  we  know  him 
now,  would  have  a  poor  time  in  a  Socialist  state,  but  the 
same  qualities  of  watchful  discretion  would  be  needed 
at  a  hundred  new  angles  and  friction  surfaces  of  the  state 
organization.  In  the  same  way  the  private  shopkeeper, 
as  I  have  already  explained,  would  be  replaced  by  the 
department  managers  and  buyers  of  the  public  stores ;  the 
rent  collector,  the  estate  bailiff  —  one  might  make  long 
lists  of  social  types  who  would  undergo  a  parallel  trans- 
formation. 

But  suppose  now  you  are  a  servant,  I  mean  a  well- 
trained,  expert,  prosperous  servant;    would  the  world 


316  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

have  no  equivalent  of  you  under  the  new  order?  I 
think  probably  it  would.  With  a  difference,  there  will 
be  room  for  a  vast  body  of  servants  in  the  Socialist  state. 
But  I  think  there  will  be  very  few  servants  to  private 
people,  and  that  the  "menial"  conception  of  a  servant 
will  have  vanished  in  an  entirely  educated  community. 
The  domestic  work  of  the  ordinary  home,  one  may 
prophesy  confidently,  will  be  very  much  reduced  in 
the  near  future,  whether  we  move  toward  Socialism  or 
no.  All  the  dirt  of  coal,  all  the  disagreeables  attendant 
upon  lamps  and  candles,  most  of  the  heavy  work  of 
cooking,  will  be  obviated  by  electric  lighting  and  heating, 
and  much  of  the  bedroom  service  dispensed  with  through 
the  construction  of  properly  equipped  bath-dressing- 
rooms.  In  addition,  it  is  highly  probable  that  there  will 
be  a  considerable  extension  of  the  club  idea;  ordinary 
people  will  dine  more  freely  in  public  places,  and  con- 
veniences for  their  doing  so  will  increase.  The  single- 
handed  servant  will  have  disappeared,  and  if  you  are 
one  of  that  class,  you  must  console  yourself  by  thinking 
that  under  Socialism  you  would  have  been  educated  up 
to  seventeen  or  eighteen  and  then  equipped  for  some 
more  interesting  occupation.  But  there  will  remain 
much  need  of  occasional  help  of  a  more  skilled  sort,  in 
cleaning  out  the  house  thoroughly  every  now  and  then, 
probably  with  the  help  of  mechanisms,  in  recovering  and 


SOME   ARGUMENTS   AD  HOMINEM  317 

repairing  furniture;  and  in  all  this  sort  of  "helping" 
which  will  be  done  as  between  one  social  equal  and 
another,  many  people  who  are  now,  through  lack  of 
opportunity  and  education,  servants,  will  no  doubt  be 
employed.  But  where  the  better  type  of  service  will  be 
found  will  probably  be  in  the  clubs  and  associated  homes, 
where  pleasant-mannered,  highly  paid,  skilful  people 
will  see  to  the  ease  and  comfort  of  a  considerable  clientele 
without  either  offence  or  servility.  There  still  remains, 
no  doubt,  a  number  of  valets,  footmen,  maids,  and  so  on, 
who  under  Socialism  would  not  be  servants  at  all,  but 
something  far  better,  more  interesting  and  more  produc- 
tive socially. 

But  this  writing  of  servants  brings  me  now  to  another 
possibility,  and  that  is  that  perhaps  you  are,  dear  reader, 
one  of  that  small  number  of  fortunate  people,  rich  and 
well  placed  in  the  world,  who  even  under  existing  con- 
ditions seem  to  possess  all  that  life  can  offer  a  human 
being.  You  live  beautifully  in  a  great  London  house, 
waited  upon  by  companies  of  servants ;  you  have  country 
seats  with  parks  about  them  and  fine  gardens ;  you  can 
travel  luxuriously  to  any  part  of  the  civilized  world  and 
live  sumptuously  there.  All  things  are  done  for  you,  all 
ways  are  made  smooth  for  you.  A  skilled  maid  or  valet 
saves  you  even  the  petty  care  of  your  person,  skilled 
physicians,  wonderful  specialists,  intervene  at  any  threat 


318  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

of  illness  or  discomfort ;  you  keep  ten  years  younger  in 
appearance  than  your  poorer  contemporaries  and  twice 
as  splendid.  And  above  all  you  have  an  immense  sense 
of  downward  perspectives,  of  being  special  and  apart  and 
above  the  common  herd  of  mankind. 

Now,  frankly,  Socialism  will  be  incompatible  with  this 
patrician  style.  You  must  contemplate  the  end  of  all 
that.  You  may  still  be  healthy,  refined,  free,  beautifully 
clothed  and  housed,  but  you  will  not  have  either  the 
space  or  the  service  or  the  sense  or  superiority  you  enjoy 
now,  under  Socialism.  You  will  have  to  take  your  place 
among  the  multitude  again.  Only  a  moiety  of  your  prop- 
erty will  remain  to  you.  The  rents  upon  which  you 
live,  the  investments  that  yield  the  income  that  makes 
the  employment  of  that  army  of  butlers  and  footmen, 
estate  workers  and  underlings,  possible,  that  buys  your 
dresses,  your  jewels,  your  motor  cars,  your  splendid 
furnishings  and  equipments,  will  be  public  property 
yielding  revenue  to  some  national  or  municipal  treasury. 
You  will  have  to  give  up  much  of  that.  There  is  no 
way  out  of  it,  your  way  to  Socialism  is  through  "the 
needle's  eye."  From  your  rare  class  and  from  your 
class  alone  does  Socialism  require  a  real  material  sac- 
rifice. You  must  come  down  to  a  simpler,  and  in  many 
material  aspects  a  less  distinguished,  way  of  living. 

This  is  so  clearly  evident  that  to  any  one  who  believes 


SOME   ARGUMENTS  AD  HOMINEM  319 

self-seeking  is  the  ruling  motive,  the  only  possible  mo- 
tive in  mankind,  it  seems  incredible  that  your  class  will 
do  anything  than  oppose  to  the  last  the  advancement  of 
Socialism.  You  will  fight  for  what  you  have,  and  the 
Have-nots  will  fight  to  take  it  away.  They  preach  a  class 
war,  to  my  mind  a  lurid,  violent,  and  distasteful  pros- 
pect. We  shall  have  to  get  out  of  the  miseries  and  dis- 
order of  to-day,  if  not  by  way  of  chateau-burning  and 
tumbrils,  at  least  by  a  mitigated  equivalent  of  that. 
But  I  am  not  altogether  of  that  opinion.  I  have  a  lurk- 
ing belief  that  you  are  not  altogether  eaten  up  by  the 
claims  of  your  own  magnificence.  While  there  are,  no 
doubt,  a  number  of  people  in  your  class  who  would  fight 
like  rats  in  a  corner  against,  let  us  say,  the  feeding  of 
poor  people's  starving  children,  or  the  recovery  of  the 
land  by  the  state  to  which  it  once  belonged,  I  believe 
there  is  enough  of  nobility  in  your  class  as  a  whole  to 
considerably  damp  their  resistance.  Because  you  have 
silver  mirrors  and  silver  hair-brushes,  it  does  not  follow 
that  you  have  not  a  conscience.  I  am  no  believer  in 
the  theory  that  to  be  a  sans-culotte  is  to  be  morally 
impeccable,  or  that  a  man  loses  his  soul  because  he  pos- 
sesses thirty  pairs  of  trousers  beautifully  folded  by  a  valet. 
I  cherish  the  belief  that  your  very  refinement  will  turn  — 
I  have  seen  it  in  one  or  two  fine  minds  visibly  turning  — 
against  the  social  conditions  that  made  it  possible.    All 


320  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

this  space,  all  this  splendour,  has  its  traceable  connection 
with  the  insufficiencies  and  miseries  from  which  you  are 
remote.  Once  that  realization  comes  to  you,  the  world 
changes.  In  certain  lights,  correlated  with  that,  your 
magnificence  can  look,  you  will  discover  —  forgive  the 
word  !  —  a  little  vulgar.  .  .  .  Once  you  have  seen  that, 
you  will  continue  to  see  it.  The  nouveau  riche  comes 
thrusting  among  you,  demonstrating  that  sometimes 
quite  obtrusively.  You  begin  by  feeling  sorry  for  his 
servants  and  then  apologetic  to  your  own.  You  cannot 
"go  it"  as  the  rich  Americans  and  the  rich  South 
Africans,  or  prosperous  bookmakers  or  music-hall  pro- 
prietors "go  it,"  their  silver  and  ivory  and  diamonds 
throw  light  on  your  own.  And  among  other  things  you 
discover  you  are  not  nearly  so  dependent  on  the  numer- 
ous men  in  livery,  the  spaces  and  enrichments,  for  your 
pride  and  comfort  as  these  upstart  people. 

I  trust  also  to  the  appeal  of  the  intervening  spaces. 
You  cannot  so  entirely  close  your  world  in  from  the 
greater  world  without,  that,  in  transit  at  least,  the 
other  aspects  do  not  intrude.  Every  time  you  leave 
Charing  Cross  for  the  Continent,  for  example,  there  are 
all  those  horrible  slums  on  either  side  of  the  line.  These 
things  are,  you  know,  a  part  of  your  system,  part  of  you ; 
they  are  the  reverse  of  that  splendid  fabric  and  no 
separate  thing :  the  wide  rich  tapestry  of  your  lives  comes 


SOME   ARGUMENTS  AD  HOMINEM  321 

through  on  the  other  side,  stitch  for  stitch,  in  stunted 
bodies,  in  children's  deaths,  in  privation  and  anger. 
Your  grandmothers  did  not  reaHze  that.  You  do.  You 
know.  In  that  recognition  and  a  certain  nobihty  I  find 
in  you,  I  put  my  hope,  much  more  than  in  any  dreadful 
memories  of  1789  and  those  vindictive  pikes.  Your 
class  is  a  strangely  mixed  assembly  of  new  and  old,  of 
base  and  fine.  But  through  it  all,  in  Great  Britain  and 
western  Europe,  generally,  soaks  a  tradition  truly 
aristocratic,  a  tradition  that  transcends  property;  you 
are  aware  and  at  times  uneasily  aware  of  duty  and  a 
sort  of  honour.  You  cannot  bilk  cabmen  nor  cheat 
at  cards;  there  is  something  in  your  making  forbids 
that  as  strongly  as  an  instinct.  But  what  if  it  is 
made  clear  to  you,  and  it  is  being  made  clear  to  you, 
that  the  wealth  you  have  is,  all  unwittingly  on  your 
part,  the  outcome  of  a  colossal,  if  unpremeditated,  social 
bilking  ? 

Moreover,  though  Socialism  does  ask  you  to  abandon 
much  space  and  service,  it  offers  you  certain  austere, 
yet  not  altogether  inadequate,  compensations.  If  you 
will  cease  to  have  that  admirable  house  in  Mayfair  and 
the  park  in  Kent  and  the  moorlands  and  the  Welsh 
castle,  yet  you  will  have  another  ownership  of  a  finer  kind 
to  replace  those  things.  For  all  London  will  be  yours,  a 
city  to  serve  indeed,  and  a  sense  of  fellowship  that  is,  if 


322  NEW   WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

you  could  but  realize  it,  better  than  respect.  The  com- 
mon people  will  not  be  common  under  Socialism.  That 
is  a  very  important  thing  for  you  to  remember.  But 
better  than  those  thoughts  is  this,  that  you  will  own 
yourself,  too,  more  than  you  do  now.  All  that  state, 
all  that  prominence  of  yours  —  do  you  never  feel  how  it 
stands  between  you  and  life  ? 

So  I  appeal  from  your  wealth  to  your  nobility,  to  help 
us  to  impoverish  your  class  a  little  and  make  all  the 
world  infinitely  richer  by  that  impoverishment.  And  I 
am  sure  that  to  some  I  shall  not  appeal  in  vain.  .  .  . 

§6 

And  lastly,  perhaps  you  are  chiefly  a  patriot  and  you 
are  concerned  for  the  flag  and  country  with  which  your 
emotions  have  interwoven.  You  find  that  the  Socialist 
talks  constantly  of  internationalism  and  the  world  state, 
and  that  presents  itself  to  your  imagination  as  a  very 
vague  and  colourless  substitute  for  a  warm  and  living 
reahty  of  England  or  "these  states"  or  the  Empire. 
Well,  your  patriotism  will  have  suffered  a  change,  but 
I  do  not  think  it  need  starve  under  Socialist  conditions. 
It  may  be  that  war  will  have  ceased,  but  the  comparison 
and  competition  and  pride  of  communities  will  not  have 
ceased.  Philadelphia  and  Chicago,  Boston  and  New 
York,  are  at  peace,  in  all  probability  forever  at  peace  so 


SOME  ARGUMENTS  AD  HOMINEM  323 

far  as  guns  and  slaughter  go,  but  each  perpetually  criti- 
cises, goads,  and  tries  to  outshine  the  other.  And  the 
civic  pride  and  rivalry  of  to  day  will  be  nothing  to  that 
pride  and  rivalry  when  every  man's  business  is  the  city, 
and  the  city's  honour  and  well-being  is  his  own.  You 
will  have,  therefore,  first,  this  civic  patriotism,  your 
pride  in  your  city,  a  city  which  will  be  like  the  city  of  the 
ancient  Athenian's  or  the  mediseval  Italian's,  the  centre 
of  a  system  of  territories,  the  property  and  chief  interest 
of  its  citizens.  I,  for  instance,  should  love  and  serve, 
even  as  I  love  to-day,  these  home  counties  about  London, 
the  great  lap  of  the  Thames  Valley  and  the  Weald  and 
Downlands,  my  own  country  in  which  all  my  life  has  been 
spent ;  for  you  the  city  may  be  Ulster,  or  Northumbria,  or 
Wales,  or  East  or  West  Belgium,  or  Finland,  or  Burgundy, 
or  Berne,  or  Berlin,  or  Venetia,  Pekin,  Queensland,  or 
San  Francisco.  And  keeping  the  immediate  peace 
between  these  vigorous  giant  municipal  states  and  hold- 
ing them  together,  there  will  still  be  in  many  cases  the 
old  national  or  imperial  government  and  kindred  munici- 
palities with  a  common  language  and  a  common  his- 
tory and  a  common  temper  and  race.  The  nation  and 
the  national  government  will  be  the  custodian  of  the 
national  literature  and  the  common  law,  the  controller 
and  perhaps  the  vehicle  of  intermunicipal  and  inter- 
national trade  and  an  intermediary  between  its  municipal 


324  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

governments  and  that  great  Congress  to  which  all  things 
are  making,  that  permanent  international  Congress 
which  will  be  necessary  to  insure  the  peace  of  the  world. 
That,  at  least,  is  my  own  dream  of  the  order  that  may 
emerge  from  the  confusion  of  distrusts  and  tentatives 
and  dangerous  absurdities,  those  reactions  of  fear  and  old 
traditional  attitudes  and  racial  misconceptions  which 
one  speaks  of  as  international  relations  to-day. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE   ADVANCEMENT   OF  SOCIALISM 
§1 

And  here  my  brief  exposition  of  the  ideals  of  modern 
SociaHsm  may  fitly  end. 

I  have  done  my  best  to  set  out  soberly  and  plainly  this 
great  idea  of  deliberately  making  a  real  civilization  by 
the  control  and  subordination  of  the  instinct  of  property 
and  the  systematic  development  of  a  state  consciousness 
out  of  the  achievements  and  squalor,  out  of  the  fine 
forces  and  wasted  opportunities  of  to-day.  I  may  have 
an  unconscious  bias,  perhaps,  but  so  far  as  I  have 
been  able,  I  have  been  just  and  frank,  conceahng  noth- 
ing of  the  doubts  and  difficulties  of  Socialism,  nothing 
of  the  divergencies  of  opinion  among  its  supporters, 
nothing  of  the  generous  demands  it  makes  upon  the 
social  conscience,  the  Good  Will  in  man.  Its  supporters 
are  divergent  upon  a  hundred  points,  but  upon  its  funda- 
mental generalizations  they  are  all  absolutely  agreed, 
and  some  day  the  whole  world  will  be  agreed.  Their 
common  purport  is  the  resumption  by  the  community 

325 


326  NEW    WORLDS   FOR  OLD 

of  all  property  that  is  not  justly  and  obviously  personal, 
and  the  substitution  of  the  spirit  of  service  for  the  spirit 
of  gain  in  all  human  affairs. 

It  must  be  clear  to  the  reader  who  has  followed  my  ex- 
planations continuously,  that  the  present  advancement 
of  Socialism  must  lie  now  along  three  several  lines :  — 
First,  and  most  important,  is  the  primary  intel- 
lectual process,  the  elaboration,  criticism,  discussion, 
enrichment,  and  enlargement  of  the  project  of  So- 
cialism. This  includes  all  sorts  of  sociological  and 
economic  research,  the  critical  literature  of  Socialism, 
and  every  possible  way  —  the  drama,  poetry,  painting, 
music  —  of  expressing  and  refining  its  spirit,  its  atti- 
tudes, and  conceptions.  It  includes,  too,  all  sorts  of 
experiments  in  living  and  association.  In  its  widest 
sense  it  includes  all  science,  literature,  and  invention. 
Secondly  comes  the  propaganda;  the  publication, 
distribution,  repetition,  discussion,  and  explanation 
of  this  growing  body  of  ideas,  until  this  conception  of 
a  real  civilized  state  as  being  in  the  making  becomes 
the  common  intellectual  property  of  all  intelligent 
people  in  the  world ;  until  the  laws  and  social  injus- 
tices that  now  seem,  to  the  ordinary  man,  as  much 
parts  of  life  as  the  east  wind  and  influenza,  will 
seem  irrational,  unnatural,  and  absurd.  This  educa- 
tional task  is  at  the  present  time  the  main  work  that 


THE   ADVANCEMENT  OF  SOCIALISM  327 

Socialists  have  before  them.  Most  other  possibilities 
wait  upon  that  enlargement  of  the  general  circle  of 
ideas.  It  is  a  work  that  every  one  can  help  forward 
in  some  measure,  by  talk  and  discussion,  by  the  dis- 
tribution of  literature,  by  writing  and  speaking  in 
public,  by  subscribing  its  propagandist  organization. 

And  Thirdly,  there  is  the  actual  changing  of 
practical  things  in  the  direction  of  the  coming  Socialist 
State,  the  actual  socialization,  bit  by  bit  and  more  and 
more  completely,  of  the  land,  of  the  means  of  produc- 
tion, of  education  and  child  welfare,  of  insurance  and 
the  food-supply,  —  the  secular  realization,  in  fact,  of 
that  great  design  the  intellectual  process  of  Socialism 
is  continually  making  more  beautiful,  attractive,  and 
worthy.  Now  this  third  group  of  activities  is  neces- 
sarily various  and  divergent,  and  at  every  point  the 
conscious  and  confessed  Socialist  will  find  himself 
cooperating  with  partial  or  unintentional  Socialists, 
with  statesmen  and  officials,  with  opportunist  philan- 
thropists, with  Trades  Unionists,  with  religious  bodies 
and  religious  teachers,  with  educationists,  with  scien- 
tific and  medical  specialists,  with  every  sort  of  public- 
spirited  person.  He  should  never  lose  an  opportunity 
of  explaining  to  such  people  how  necessarily  they  are 
Socialists,  but  never  should  he  hesitate  to  work  with 
them  because  they  refuse  the  label.     For,  in  the  house 


328  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

of  Socialism,  as  in  the  house  of  God,  there  are  many 
mansions. 

These  are  the  three  main  channels  for  Socialist  effort, 
thought,  propaganda,  and  practical,  social,  and  political 
effort,  and  between  them  they  afford  opportunity  for 
almost  every  type  of  intelligent  human  being.  One  may 
bring  leisure,  labour,  gifts,  money,  reputation,  influence, 
to  the  service  of  Socialism ;  there  is  ample  use  for  them 
all.  There  is  work  to  be  done  for  this  idea,  from  taking 
tickets  at  a  doorway  and  lending  a  drawing-room  for  a 
meeting,  to  facing  death,  impoverishment  and  sorrow 
for  its  sake. 

§2 

Socialism  is  a  moral  and  intellectual  process,  let  me 
in  conclusion  reiterate  that.  Only  secondarily  and  in- 
cidentally does  it  sway  the  world  of  politics.  It  is  not  a 
political  movement;  it  may  engender  political  move- 
ments, but  it  can  never  become  a  political  movement; 
any  political  body,  any  organization  whatever,  that 
professes  to  stand  for  Socialism,  makes  an  altogether  too 
presumptuous  claim.  The  whole  is  greater  than  the  part, 
the  will  than  the  instrument.  There  can  be  no  official 
nor  pontifical  Socialism ;  the  theory  lives  and  grows.  It 
springs  out  of  the  common  sanity  of  mankind.    Construe- 


THE   ADVANCEMENT  OF  SOCIALISM  329 

tive  Socialism  shapes  into  a  great  system  of  developments 
to  be  forwarded,  points  to  a  great  number  of  systems  of 
activity  amidst  which  its  adherents  may  choose  their 
field  for  work.  Parties  and  societies  may  come  or  go,  par- 
ties and  organizations  and  names  may  be  used  and  aban- 
doned;   constructive  Socialism  lives  and  remains. 

There  is  a  constantly  recurring  necessity  to  insist  on 
the  difference  between  two  things,  the  larger  and  the 
lesser,  the  greater  being  the  Sdbialist  movement,  the 
lesser  the  various  organizations  that  come  and  go.  There 
is  this  necessity  because  there  is  a  sort  of  natural  antago- 
nism between  the  thinker  and  writer,  who  stand  by  the 
scheme  and  seek  to  develop  and  expound  it,  and  the 
politician  who  attempts  to  realize  it.  They  are  allies, 
but  allies  who  often  pull  against  each  other,  whom  a 
little  heat  and  thoughtlessness  may  precipitate  into  a 
wasteful  conflict.  The  former  is  perhaps  too  apt  to 
resent  the  expenditure  of  force  in  those  conflicts  of 
cliques  and  personal  ambition  that  inevitably  arise  among 
men  comparatively  untrained  for  politics,  those  squabbles 
and  intrigues,  reservations  and  insincerities  that  precede 
the  birth  of  a  tradition  of  discipline ;  the  latter  is  equally 
prone  to  think  literature  too  broad-minded  for  daily  life 
and  to  associate  all  those  aspects  of  the  Socialist  project 
which  do  not  immediately  win  votes,  with  fads,  kid 
gloves,    "gentlemanliness,"    rosewater,    and   such   like 


330  NEW   WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

contemptible  things.  These  squabbles  of  the  engineer 
and  the  navigating  officer  must  not  be  allowed  to  confuse 
the  mind  of  the  student  of  Socialism.  They  are  quarrels 
of  the  mess-room,  quarrels  on  board  the  ship  and  within 
limits;  they  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  general  direc- 
tion of  Socialism.  Like  all  indisciplines  they  hinder  but 
they  do  not  contradict  the  movement.  Socialism,  the 
politicians  declare,  can  only  be  realized  through  politics. 
Socialism,  I  would  answer,  can  never  be  narrowed  down 
to  politics.  Your  parties  and  groups  may  serve  Social- 
ism, but  they  can  never  be  Socialism.  Scientific  progress, 
medical  organization,  the  advancement  of  educational 
method,  artistic  production  and  literature  are  all  aspects 
of  Socialism;  they  are  all  interests  and  developments 
that  lie  apart  from  anything  one  may  call  —  except  by 
sheer  violence  to  language  —  politics. 

And  since  Socialism  is  an  intellectual  as  well  as  a  moral 
thing,  it  will  never  tolerate  in  its  adherents  the  abnega- 
tion of  individual  thought  and  intention.  It  demands 
devotion  to  an  idea,  not  devotion  to  a  leader.  No 
addicted  follower  of  so-and-so  or  of  so-and-so  can  be  a 
good  Socialist  any  more  than  he  can  be  a  good  scientific 
investigator.  So  far  Socialism  has  produced  no  great 
leaders  at  all.  Lassalle  alone  of  all  its  prominent  names 
was  of  that  type  of  personality  which  men  follow  with 
enthusiasm.    The  others,  Owen,  Saint  Simon,  Proudhon, 


THE  ADVANCEMENT  OF   SOCIALISM  331 

Fourier,  Marx,  Bebel,  Webb,  contributed  to  a  process 
they  never  seized  hold  upon,  never  made  their  own, 
they  gave  enrichment  and  enlargement  and  the  move- 
ment passed  on ;  passes  on  gathering  as  it  goes.  Kings- 
ley,  Morris,  Ruskin  —  none  are  too  great  to  serve  this 
idea,  and  none  so  great  they  may  control  it  or  stand  alone 
for  it.  So  it  will  continue.  Socialism  under  a  great 
leader,  or  as  a  powerfully  organized  party,  would  be  the 
end  of  Socialism.  No  doubt  it  might  also  be  its  partial 
triumph,  but  the  reality  of  the  movement  would  need 
to  take  to  itself  another  name,  to  call  itself "  constructive 
civilization"  or  some  such  synonym  in  order  to  continue 
its  undying  work.  Socialism  no  doubt  will  inspire  great 
leaders  in  the  future,  and  supply  great  parties  with  ideas ; 
in  itself  it  will  still  be  greater  than  all  such  things. 

§3 

So  this  general  account  of  Socialism  concludes.  I 
have  tried  to  put  it  as  what  it  is,  as  the  imperfect  and  still 
growing  development  of  the  social  idea,  of  the  collective 
Good  Will  in  man.  I  have  tried  to  indicate  its  relation 
to  politics,  to  religion,  to  art  and  literature,  to  the  widest 
problems  of  life.  Its  broad  generalizations  are  simple 
and  I  believe  acceptable  to  all  right-thinking  minds. 
And  in  a  sense  they  simplify  life.  Once  they  have  been 
understood  they  clear  away  and  render  impossible  a 


332  NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

thousand  confusions  and  errors  of  thought  and  practice. 
They  are,  in  the  completest  sense  of  the  word,  illumi- 
nation. 

But  Socialism  is  no  panacea,  no  magic  "  Open  Sesame" 
to  the  millennium.  Socialism  lights  up  certain  once 
hopeless  evils  in  human  affairs  and  shows  the  path  by 
which  escape  is  possible,  but  it  leaves  that  path  rugged 
and  difficult.  Socialism  is  hope,  but  it  is  not  assurance. 
Throughout  this  book  I  have  tried  to  keep  that  before 
the  reader.  Directly  one  accepts  those  great  generaliza- 
tions, one  passes  on  to  a  jungle  of  incurably  intricate 
problems  through  which  man  has  to  make  his  way  or 
fail,  the  riddles  and  inconsistencies  of  human  character, 
the  puzzles  of  collective  action,  the  power  and  decay  of 
traditions,  the  perpetually  recurring  tasks  and  problems 
of  education.  To  have  become  a  Socialist  is  to  have 
learnt  something,  to  have  made  an  intellectual  and  a 
moral  step,  to  have  discovered  a  general  purpose  in  life 
and  a  new  meaning  in  duty  and  brotherhood.  But  to 
have  become  a  Socialist  is  not,  as  many  suppose,  to  have 
become  generally  wise.  Rather  in  realizing  the  nature  of 
the  task  that  could  be  done,  one  realizes  also  one's 
insufficiencies,  one's  want  of  knowledge,  one's  need  of 
force  and  training.  Here  and  in  this  manner,  says 
Socialism,  a  palace  and  safety  and  great  happiness  may 
be  made  for  mankind.     But  it  seems  to  me  the  Socialist, 


THE  ADVANCEMENT  OF  SOCIALISM  333 

as  he  turns  his  hand  and  way  of  living  towards  that  com- 
mon end,  knows  little  of  the  nature  of  his  task  if  he  does 
so  with  any  but  a  lively  sense  of  his  individual  weakness 
and  the  need  of  charity  for  all  that  he  achieves. 

In  that  spirit  and  with  no  presumption  of  fmality 
this  book  of  explanations  is  given  to  the  world. 


« Socialism  grew  to  be  a  very  important  question  during  the 
nineteenth  century ;  in  all  probability  it  will  be  the  supreme  ques- 
tion of  the  twentieth.'^''  —  T.  K. 


A  History  of  Socialism 

By   THOMAS    KIRKUP 

Third  Edition,  revised  and  enlarged 

Cloth,  8vo,  400  pages  and  index,  $2.2j  net 

"  The  aim  of  the  present  book  is  twofold  :  to  set  forth  the  lead- 
ing phases  of  historic  socialism ;  and  to  attempt  a  criticism  and 
interpretation  of  the  movement  as  a  whole."  —  T.  K. 


COMMENTS  OP  THE  PRESS 

"  Unquestionably  the  best  study  of  Socialism  in  the  English 
language  .  .  .  of  the  utmost  v2X\x&:' —  Manchester  Guardian. 

"  A  book  which  should  be  on  the  shelves  of  every  public  library 
and  every  workingman's  cXnh.'' —  Pall Mall  Gazette,  London. 

"  The  chapter  on  the  growth  of  Socialism  has  been  completely 
rewritten  in  order  to  bring  it  up  to  date.  ...  He  is  singularly  free 
from  the  exaggerated  statement  and  declamatory  style  which 
characterize  the  writing  of  so  many  socialists,  and  the  concluding 
pages  of  the  present  volume  show  him  at  his  best.  ,  .  .  None  have 
surpassed  Mr.  Kirkup  in  philosophical  grasp  of  the  essentials  of 
Socialism  or  have  presented  the  doctrine  in  more  intelligible 
form."  —  The  Nation. 


PUBLISHED  BY 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Sixty-four  and  Sixty-six  Fifth  Are.,  New  York 


Socialism  Before  the 
French  Revolution 

A  History  by  WILLIAM  B.  GUTHRIE,  Ph.D.  Instructor  in  History,  Col- 
lege of  the  City  of  New  York,  Lecturer  in  Social  Science  under  the  Board 
of  Education,  and  on  Foreign  Investments  in  the  School  of  Commerce  and 
Finance  of  New  York  University. 

Cloth,  33Q  pages,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 

The  first  comprehensive  attempt  to  fill  a  notable  gap  in  the  record  of  the  history  of 
social  reform.  Dr.  Guthrie  deals  with  :  The  Beginnings  of  Social  Unrest  in  England;  The 
Social  Theories  of  Sir  Thomas  More  ;  Life  and  Times  of  Campanella,  and  his  Socialism  ; 
Eighteenth  Century  Radicalism  In  France  ;  The  Social  Teachings  of  Morelly  ; 
Revolutionary  Radicals. 

"  One  of  the  chief  merits  of  the  work  is  the  care  which  the  author  has  used  to  connect 
the  doctrines  he  discusses  with  social  conditions  of  the  days  in  which  they  appeared,  as 
well  as  with  the  trains  of  thought  from  which  they  grew  and  the  other  trains  which  in 
turn  grew  out  of  them.  Because  of  his  contributions  in  this  regard  Professor  E.  R.  A. 
Seligman,  who  has  given  special  consideration  to  such  efforts,  praises  the  volume  in  an 
introduction  which  he  contributes." —  Record-Herald,  Chicago. 


The  Psychology  of  Socialism 

By  GUSTAV  Le  BON,  author  of   "The    Psychology    of   People,"   "The 
Psychology  of  the  Crowd,"  etc. 

Cloth,  415  pages,  8vo,  $3.00  net 

His  discussion  of  the  new  faith  with  its  incontestable  power  is  illuminating  ;  its  divi- 
sions are  :  The  Socialistic  Theories  and  Their  Disciples  ;  Socialism  as  a  Belief ; 
Socialism  as  affected  by  Race  ;  The  Conflict  between  Economic  Necessities  and 
the  Aspirations  of  the  Socialists  ;  The  Conflict  between  the  Laws  of  Evolution,  the 
Democratic  Ideal,  and  the  Aspirations  of  the  Socialists  ;  The  Destinies  of  Socialism. 


OF  RELATED  INTEREST 

The  Limit  of  Wealth 

By  ALFRED  L.  HUTCHINSON.  Cloth,  I2mo,  $I.2j  net 

The  Public  Ledger,  Phila. 

"  Whatever  we  think  of  its  theories,  this  book  is  undoubtedly  one  to  be  read  by  all 
who  concern  themselves  with  social  reform  ...  a  very  amusing  and  suggestive 
discussion  of  certain  public  questions  which  very  much  need  ventilation." 


PUBLISHED  BY 

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Sixty-four  and  Sixty-six  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 


Democracy  vs.  Socialism 

A  Critical  Examination  of  Socialism  as  a  Remedy  for  Social  Injustice 
and  an  Exposition  of  the  Single  Tax  Doctrine. 

By  MAX  HIRSCH 

Cloth,  481  pages,  8vo,  $3.25  net 

Mr.  Hirsch  offers  the  other  side  to  those  who  would  thoroughly  investigate 
the  socialist  doctrine.  He  analyzes  the  teachings  of  Socialism  ;  points  out 
what  he  conceives  to  be  the  errors  in  their  economic  and  ethical  standpoint  ; 
exhibits  the  conflict  between  their  industrial  and  distributive  proposals,  and 
the  disasters  toward  which  they  tend.  In  his  final  section  he  aims  to  show 
that  upon  the  success  of  certain  social  reforms  depends  the  realization  of  the 
ultimate  object  of  both  Individualism  and  Socialism — the  establishment  of 
social  justice. 


The  Menace  of  Privilege 

By  HENRY  GEORGE,  Jr. 

Cloth,  xii+421  pages,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 

"  An  unusually  powerful  book.  .  .  .  One  need  not  agree  with  all  the  con- 
clusions of  the  author  to  profit  by  his  arguments.  The  volume  deserves 
careful  study," — Annals  of  the  Arnerican  Academy. 

"  No  more  important  work  dealing  with  the  grave  problems  that  confront  the 
American  Republic  to-day  has  appeared  in  months  than  Mr.  George's  strong, 
clear,  and  logical  work.  It  is  a  book  that  every  young  man  and  woman  that 
loves  the  Republic  should  carefully  read." — Arena. 

The  Outlook  declares  that  "  there  is  much  in  this  volume  that  is  true,  much 
that  needs  to  be  said,  much  that  is  well  said." 

"A  very  timely  and  suggestive  book,  worth  careful  reading  by  every  intelli- 
gent man  and  good  citizen." —  Chicago  Inter-Ocean, 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Sixty-four  and  Sixty-six  Fifth  Avenue,   New  York 


OTHER  WORKS  ON  SOCIALISM 


By  JOHN  SPARGO 

Socialism 

A  Summary  and  Interpretation  of  Socialist  Principles 

i2mo,  Cloth,  $1.25  net 

"The  'man  in  the  street' will  find  this  little  volume  an  up-to- 
date  exposition  of  the  Socialism  that  is  alive  in  the  world  to-day." 

—  Review  of  Reviews. 

"Anything  of  Mr.  Spargo's  is  well  worth  reading,  for  it  is 
written  with  conviction  and  with  a  sense  of  concrete  life  far  re- 
moved from  mere  doctrinairism.  .  .  .  Anybody  who  wants  to  know 
exactly  what  the  American  Marxian  of  the  saner  sort  is  aiming  at 
will  find  it  here.  In  view  of  the  present  situation  it  is  a  book 
that  every  thoughtful  person  will  want  to  read  and  read  carefully." 

—  World  To-day. 

By  jack  LONDON 

War  of  the  Classes 

By  the  Author  of  "  The  People  of  the  Abyss,"  etc. 

Cloth,  $1.50  net,  paper,  25  cts.  net 

"A  series  of  correlated  essays,  direct  and  trenchant  in  style, 
fresh  and  vigorous  in  thought,  and  .  .  .  exceedingly  entertaining 
in  manner."  —  New  York  Sun. 

"Mr.  London's  book  is  thoroughly  interesting,  and  Mr.  London's 
point  of  view  is,  as  may  be  surmised,  very  different  from  that  of  the 
closet  theorist."  —  Springfield  Republican. 

"His  clear  and  incisive  thinking  arrests  attention  —  on  many 
points  carries  conviction  —  and  on  the  whole  illuminates  its  subject." 

—  Chicago  Record-Herald. 

"  The  statements  of  this  book  are  as  bare  and  bold  as  the  story 
of  the  '  Sea  Wolf,'  and  present  the  socialists'  and  laborers'  side  of 
the  economic  situation  with  vigor,  clearness,  and  impressiveness." 

—  The  Watchman. 


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Sixty-four  and  Sixty-six  Fifth  Avenue,   New  York 


I 


